Midgard Legends
by zeta-tauri
Summary: Loki just wants to live a quiet life of self-imposed exile. It's not his fault the humans have found the Tesseract and started killing one another again. Also crosses over with Hellboy, but I only have space for two fandoms. Directly follows Those Who Hunt Monsters.
1. Preface

Disclaimer: This story does horrible things to canon dates, though I have tried to stick to real-world dates as much as possible.

This story also does horrible things to the military, which sometimes overlaps with the horrible things it does to dates. Rather than add a note every time I've done something wrong, and drown this fic in notes, I'm just going to ask you to assume any factual or canon errors to be deliberate and a part of this alternate universe.

* * *

"I beseech you heartily, scurvy, lousy knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions to eat, look you—" Loki slapped David across the face with the leek "—this leek; Because, look you—" He slapped him with it again, and David took a large step back this time. "You do not love it, nor you affections and your appetites and your digestions doo's not agree with it, I would desire you to eat it."

Loki brandished the leek in David's face. David jumped, raising his hands in defence as if Loki held a dagger.

"Not for Cadwallader and all his goats," he snapped, and spat on the ground, folding his arms.

"There is one goat for you." He looked down at the leek and struck him across the face with it again, and then shoved him to the ground. "Will you be so good, scauld knave, as eat it?"

David glared up at him, his face set in a murderous scowl. "Base Trojan, thou shalt die."

The audience laughed, and Loki grinned at David before redoubling his grip on the leek, and advancing.

* * *

Loki made his final exit, finding Kitty waiting in the wings with his eyeglasses and an open bottle of Coke. She handed him the eyeglasses first, peering around him to the action on the stage. Once Loki had the glasses settled, he looked over Kitty's shoulder to watch the rest of the scene play out. He took the Coke from her and took a drink as the scene on stage drew to a close.

"And now I get to go get felt up," Kitty complained quietly.

Loki frowned. "This director's an idiot," he whispered back. "Hal shouldn't even touch Kate until the kiss."

Kitty sighed as the stagehands bustled past them to change the scenery. "At least it's the last night."

She took her mark along with the others in the scene. The lights rose, and Loki stepped back from the sight lines to watch the beginning of the scene. Like every time before, he rolled his eyes at the portrayal of the eponymous king, all but groping Katherine when he was meant to be charming her, and made quiet tracks back to the dressing room to await the curtain call.

Loki stood out amongst the humans, even when he altered his appearance to match theirs. Short of completely changing his form, he'd always stand out. He stood taller than most of them, and was at least three times their weight. How, he couldn't determine, because he wasn't anything near three times their size. He supposed he could have also shrunk himself to a more unremarkable stature, but the idea of relearning his own height seemed like far too much effort.

A stolen pair of spectacles made him something to be ignored. An overcoat too wide in the shoulders seemed to make him disappear entirely. He didn't even have to use magic. Superman, eat your heart out. It was an illusion that suited Loki perfectly, at least for the time being.

In the dressing room, listening to the dialogue from the stage over a tinny speaker, Loki pulled his hair back into a tail and took off his eyeglasses, blinking several times to clear his vision. Technically, he was meant to remain in full costume until curtain call, but he felt as if he was suffocating beneath the heavy make-up. He unscrewed the tin of cold cream and absently cleaned his face with a stained rag. Looking back up into the mirror, he could see the dark circles under his eyes. Opening and closing nights were always the toughest, he thought. Opening, because he could practically taste everyone's nervous energy, and closing because he was positively exhausted. The after-party was a custom he'd come to loathe, but in which he participated all the same. So much time spent in this false, human skin, under burning lights was almost enough to make him choke some days. But it was worth it, he thought. Even with idiot directors, he couldn't think of anything he'd rather be doing.

In the hall outside, the stage manager announced curtain call in two minutes' time, and those around Loki slowly began to shuffle out of the room. Loki put his eyeglasses back on and stared back at his tired reflection in the mirror. If he hadn't known better, he have mistaken the man staring back at him as just another human. It was almost frightening.

"Once more unto the breach," he told himself as he grabbed his Coke and returned to the wings.

* * *

Loki sat backstage, half-listening to someone's lover tell stories about art school. Loki hadn't been paying any attention when the man had introduced himself, and he was coming to regret it. At least if he'd known which actor had invited the incessant fly in his ear, Loki could have returned him to his keeper. Whatever the young man was talking about, he seemed quite excited by it, even if Loki didn't laugh at what might have been the humorous parts. He was just on the point of damning politeness and walking away when Kitty rushed over, barging in between the two of them and cutting off the fly mid-buzz. She was leading a short, brunette woman by the hand, who looked just as bored by the party as Loki felt.

"Here he is," Kitty said. "The one I was telling you about."

Loki's eyebrows rose. "You were telling someone about me?" he asked. "Should I be worried?"

"Only Georgia," said Kitty with a wicked grin. "You two should get to know one another."

Before either of them could protest, Kitty was gone again, leaving Georgia standing awkwardly.

"She does this," Georgia said, annoyed. "I can go find someone else to talk to if you want."

"No, it's fine. Stay," Loki said. He quickly got to his feet, offering Georgia his chair. "Sit down. Please."

Georgia hesitated only briefly, studying Loki curiously before sitting. She crossed her legs at the knee, exposing a small bit of her thigh. Even through her stockings, it was clear she kept her legs shaved. It seemed a very recent trend amongst the women of the realm, and Loki wasn't sure he liked it much.

"I don't believe I've seen you at one of these before," Loki said, doing an admirable job at not staring at Georgia's legs.

Georgia snorted. "No, you wouldn't have," she said. "Kitty's my cousin, and she's got it into her head all of a sudden that I need to meet a man. Apparently she thinks vapid and shallow is what I need in a man."

"Ah." Loki noticed the art student throw his hands into the air and stalk off, so he took the vacated seat for himself. "She does enjoy playing match-maker, doesn't she?"

Georgia managed not to roll her eyes, but only just. Loki thought he could rather get to like her before too long.

"So how do you know her then?" she asked, pulling a pack of cigarettes from her handbag.

"We met a few years ago during iEarnest/i," Loki replied. "I annoyed her by looking better in a frock than she does."

Finally, Georgia laughed as she lit up. "And just how the hell did you find that out?"

Loki shrugged. "I get bored sometimes. Don't you?"

"Sometimes," Georgia said. She looked around, but Kitty had disappeared. "I bet we could liven things up and make Kitty happy if we thought real hard."

Her eyes were back on Loki, looking at him properly for the first time. "Or are girls not your speed?"

Loki hadn't intended to take her to bed, but he rather felt as if he were being challenged to it now. And it wasn't exactly like he was against the idea. He leaned in close and looked at her over the rims of his glasses.

"Perhaps I ought to show you around," he offered. "Since it's your first time here."

He stood, offering his hand. Georgia took it, letting Loki lead her through the maze of prop closets and side rooms. He quickly found an unoccupied costume room and guided Georgia inside, leaning in to kiss her before the door was even closed. He half-expected her to pull away, or worse, slap him but she eagerly kissed him back instead. Loki deepened the kiss, backing her to a disused vanity against the wall. He lifted her up onto it, putting himself between her knees.

"What'd she say your name was?" Georgia asked suddenly.

"Luke," Loki answered breathlessly. He started trailing kisses down her neck as he let his hands wander across her body.

Georgia hitched herself up slightly, allowing Loki to reach down to unfasten some of the various clips and snaps of her undergarments. "Where's that accent from, Luke?" she asked.

"England," Loki answered, deciding suddenly that her brassiere needed to come off as well.

"You're English?" she asked.

"Nope. Just learned the language there," Loki said. He forgot about her brassiere and instead moved to open his trousers instead. "Did Kitty tell you I'm a prince?"

"I thought she was just bullshitting me so I'd talk to you," Georgia said.

Loki laughed easily. "There may have been a bit of that as well."

He took her right there on the vanity, neither of them bothering to keep their voices down. It wasn't as if half the troupe hadn't done similarly at one point or another.

"So, where—where are you from?" Georgia asked, her breath hot against Loki's neck.

"Very, very north of England," he managed.

Suddenly, the door slammed open. Loki froze, not sure if he should be annoyed at the intrusion, or that he'd left the door unlocked.

"We're at war with Japan!"

Loki adjusted his glasses and turned to glare at their intruder. He was a stagehand called Peter or something. At this moment, Loki didn't particularly care.

"We're a little busy," he said, jerking his head toward the door.

Peter belated realised what he'd walked in on and quickly shut the door, muttering an apology.

"Peasants," Loki complained.

Georgia laughed, burying her face in Loki's shoulder. Shaking his head, Loki couldn't help but laugh as well as he slid his hand back under her skirt.

"Where were we?" he asked.

* * *

Loki woke alone, his limbs dangling off the edges of the small Murphy bed in his Brooklyn apartment. The space was becoming comfortable, despite its smallness, which meant it was almost time to start looking for new lodgings. Every few years, by the local calendar, he had to move to avoid suspicions, but for the last fifty or so,during his visits to Midgard, he'd been staying around New York. It was large and crowded enough that he could go to a different part of the city and never cross paths with anyone who might recognise him.

He'd been lazy lately, though. Careless. He'd grown close to Kitty and several others from the troupe, and now it was coming time to sever those ties. Loki never did relish those times.

But he didn't think about any of this as he reached for his watch on the small bedside table, squinting at the dial in the low light. It was barely past midday — far too early to contemplate upsetting his make-believe life. Too early to even be awake.

He kept heavy shades on the windows and half a dozen locks on the door to ensure his privacy. He could have warded the apartment with magic, but the spells would have to be renewed every so often, and he had a tendency to be gone far longer than he ever planned. But the humans valued privacy. To them, a locked door was a sign that they weren't welcome, rather than an invitation to test their strength. Loki liked that, because it meant that even on Midgard, he didn't have to keep himself completely hidden. While in his small apartment, at least, he was free to wear his own skin.

He shifted about in bed, debating going back to sleep. The show had closed, leaving Loki with little to do until the next interesting script came along. In the end, he got up, if only to shower away the smell of sex and cheap alcohol.

He detoured to the kitchen first to see if anything substantial had materialised in the icebox overnight. It remained woefully empty. He stared into it anyway and tepid water dripped down his neck from the ceiling. Loki shut the icebox door and reached for the broom, which only ever served a single purpose. He pounded the tip of the handle against the ceiling five or six times, nearly cracking the plaster.

"Empty your tray!" he shouted, setting the broom aside. Not that he expected anyone to listen. "Or I'll come up there and do it for you," Loki muttered to himself. "And you won't like it."

He grabbed an empty bowl from the sink and dropped it in the puddle on the floor. He could deal with it properly when he had the energy. And the first step toward that was a hot shower.

As Loki stood beneath the water, he thought he could hear someone singing. Someone very far away, almost as if they were praying. Loki ignored it, choosing to wash his hair instead. No-one prayed in earnest anymore. Only those at parties, looking to frighten their friends. Sometimes, Loki would indulge them and answer their prayers, but he wasn't in the mood for it this time. It was still far too early in the day.

Maybe next time.

For weeks after, Loki heard the prayers, or singing, or whatever it was. The more he heard it, the less he was sure of what he was hearing. It wasn't a constant noise, mercifully, but it did grow louder with each day. Something desperately wanted his attention, and Loki was feeling just contrary and spiteful enough to ignore it's beck and call. He found other things to occupy his mind, letting him ignore the voiceless noise. He went to clubs with Kitty and some of her friends, he saw other plays in the area. On Saturdays, he went to the cinema to watch the news reels.

Films were being played alongside the news now. Not just serials either, and the idea fascinated Loki. He especially enjoyed the animated films, and at present, he had the choice between iDumbo/i (again) or a short string of Bugs Bunny cartoons. In the end, his quarter went to the rabbit.

The small house was no more crowded than usual, but it was unusually loud. Half the price of the ticket went toward the newsreel before the feature, and Loki had been rather eager to see what the humans had been up to over the previous week. Someone in front, however, wasn't so interested in it, seeming to think that shouting to start the picture would convince the man in the projection booth to change reels.

By the third scathing catcall, Loki started to get out of his seat. He wasn't sure what he was going to do to the idiot at the front of the house, but he was sure he'd figure something out along the way. Make him think he was sitting on hot pins, perhaps.

"Hey, you wanna shut up?"

At the second voice cutting over the reel, Loki took his seat again. If someone else was going to deal with the problem, he was more than happy to let them. The heckler stood, turning to loom over those around him.

"What?" he asked. "You wanna take this outside, pipsqueak?" he asked.

Someone else stood, the two of them completely blocking Loki's view of the screen. He rolled his eyes and sunk down into his seat, waiting for them to hurry up and get interesting or leave.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do," said the boy. At least, Loki thought he was a boy, despite his voice.

The two left the house in a hurry, the larger one pushing the other up the aisle as the news shifted slightly from propaganda to developments from overseas. The reporting was at once terribly sensational and heavily censored, giving only the barest facts. One thing was clear, though. Something had happened in Norway. Tønsberg, to be precise. Loki sat up in his seat to listen more attentively, hoping to glean anything useful from the report. He recognised something about the name, but it had been years since Midgard was the topic of conversation around Asgard. Loki had been all of ten when the decree to lock off the realm was issued. But still, the name stuck in his mind like a thorn. By the time the reel finished and the cartoon began, Loki had lost all interest in what played on the screen. He got up from his seat and wandered outside to think. Something was deeply important about Norway, but Loki couldn't remember what it was for the life of him. The only thing to be done was to go have a look for himself.

It took Loki almost a day of shadow-walking to find Tønsberg, in the south of the nation, and when he did find it, it was a mess. He had been to that region of Midgard before. Early in Thor's Sjálfsmynd, Loki spent time in Lappland and Svalbard, looking for new methods of intoxication. Buildings lay in ruin, some still smoldering. It had been, by his calculations, at least three days had passed since the attack on these people, and still they remained scattered and panicked. Looking around, he wasn't entirely sure what else to expect from them though.

A young girl stood on the cobblestone road, crying. Loki couldn't very easily judge the ages in young humans, but she seemed old enough to speak. Loki stepped from the shadows and knelt down in front of her.

"Can you tell me what happened here?" he asked softly.

The girl began to cry in earnest, wailing for her mother.

"No, of course not," Loki mused quietly. He pressed his thumb to his lips, apparently in thought, before bringing it to the girl's face to wipe away her tears.

"You're far too young to remember any of this, aren't you?" he said quietly, imposing his will. "Not even in your dreams."

Loki noticed a young woman running toward him, and pointed to her.

"Is this your mother?" he asked.

As the girl nodded, her mother stopped to pick her up.

"Thank you," she said to Loki.

Loki nodded. "Can you tell me what happened here?" he asked. "What were they after?"

The woman looked around the devastation of her town, utter bewilderment written on her face.

"The church," she said finally. "They wanted something from the church. That's where it started."

It was more than enough to go on. Loki nodded, recalling discussions of holy wars from his youth.

"Go home," he told her. "It's not safe out here, but help is coming."

The woman nodded and turned slowly away. Loki watched her go, still unable to think of anything that would be worth this much destruction. No amount of wondering would answer his question, so finally he turned to walk down the road to the church, or what remained of it. Half of its façade had been blown away, taking its spires with it. Precarious mounds of rubble stood in the way, and against his better judgement, Loki climbed over them to get inside.

It was clear help had not even thought to arrive. While someone had at least cleared away what Loki estimated to be the bodies of two people — no doubt this church's priest included — no-one had bothered to clear away the blood stains on the flagstones.

There was an open tomb in the centre of the room. Loki approached it cautiously and peered inside, but found nothing but someone long-dead. The only clue he gave was the position of his hands. Something had been taken from him. Perhaps whatever it was that lay shattered on the ground in front of his tomb. Apparently, not even places of worship were considered sacred.

"Your gods have abandoned you," Loki muttered as he turned to leave. He kicked a bit of mortar, watching it skip along the ground.

"I am all you have left."

As he walked back toward the entrance, a far wall caught his eye. Depicted on it was Yggdrasil, sculpted beautifully into the ancient, dark wood. Only a small panel was missing, too perfect and clean to be the result of the blast that shattered the front. This church held something much coveted by someone.

These were once Odin's people, Loki knew. Odin taught them language and gave them runes. He gave them honour and allowed them into Valhalla. But the humans were fickle. They forgot their gods; traded them for bedtime stories. No-one ever prayed and meant it.

Except—

Someone, or something, had prayed. Something wanted to be found, and Loki ignored it.

Tønsberg. Odin first came here before the great war with Jötunheimr. Laufey struck here because it was a strike against Odin himself. It was with these people Odin left a means by which to defend the realm, though he left no instructions on how to use it. The idea had been that by the time the humans could harness its power, they would be ready to join the higher realms.

Loki looked around the shattered church, and to the destroyed town beyond. The humans were not ready.

"Ymir's tits," he hissed.

He looked skyward, for the first time since his arrival to the realm tempted to uncloak himself from Heimdall's gaze. But no. If Heimdall saw him here, now, he would only draw the most obvious of conclusions. What use was Odin's disappointed foundling, if not to cause trouble? Nothing Loki could say would free him from this blame.

"Fine," he spat to the sky. "One more thing you fouled up that I have to fix. I don't even care."

He kicked at the debris on the ground until he ran out of things to kick. Something had to be done, and he knew it. And who better to do it than Loki, apparent fixer for all the other gods' mistakes? He took several deep breaths to calm himself and listened. He would find the Tesseract, and he would do so without Odin or Thor or anyone else's help. All he had to do was listen.


	2. Beacon of Prayer

The Tesseract had travelled far since being taken from Tønsberg. It sang quietly still, but the song had changed. Now it sang with a glorious purpose.

There was no shadow-walking or games of hide-and-seek. The Tesseract still spoke to him; still prayed, and all Loki had to do was answer its call. He went to the Tesseract and found himself high in a mountain fortress in a strange part of Midgard. A small, bespectacled man pottered about near an immense machine, taking notes and making adjustments. What the machine was and what it did, Loki neither knew nor cared. The Tesseract was somewhere in the room.

There were two guards by the door, alert for any sign of trouble. Loki walked amongst them unseen, pausing to curiously peer down at the weapons they held. He moved silently over to the man at the machine and inspected it. Though it seemed designed to house something fitting the Tesseract's description, he found no sign of it. Still, the work was impressive, even if half-started and alien. Loki suspected, the more he looked at the machine and the calculations on the nervous little man's clipboard, that he would not like what was intended for the Tesseract.

There was one other man in the room, far on the outer wall. He sat behind a desk, overlooking the mountains beyond. It was clear that he was the man in charge. Loki walked up to his desk, letting his concealment drop, chin high, eyes cold as he loomed over the desk. He almost wished for a breeze to make his coat billow.

"I believe you have something of mine," he said with a sneer.

The man behind the desk stood up suddenly. He glared at his guards indignantly as they fumbled to react.

"What are you waiting for? Kill him!"

Loki had been shot before, both with an arrow after an ill-fated trip to Niðavellir, and with a flintlock while learning to sail with Midgard's pirates and privateers. The humans' technology had changed since then, and changed greatly. The guards quickly moved into position and opened fire. Before he was able to beat a hasty retreat, he felt the hot sting of metal piercing flesh. He gave up the idea of fighting back almost at once and returned to his apartment. On uneasy legs, steadying himself against the wall, he made his way to his bed and collapsed. The entire frame nearly buckled beneath him, but he didn't even take notice. He was too busy forcing himself to breathe. The air felt heavy in his lungs, almost as if he could drown on it.

With each forced breath, he could taste blood on his tongue. He tried to cough, hoping to clear the taste from his mouth, but it only made things worse. His vision swam dangerously from the searing pain that shot outward from his chest. He needed to sit up. He needed to fix the issue, because it would not fix itself.

Dragging the back of his hand over his mouth, Loki dared to look down at his chest, and he grimaced at what he saw. As many as six individual patches of red, blossoming out onto his shirt. He knew from painful experience that it took a considerable amount of trauma to make a god bleed so. He was almost afraid to look at the damage directly.

How stupid had he been to have expected that to work at all? Of all the idiotic, arrogant stunts he'd pulled, he knew this had been the worst. He should have at least worn armour, instead of a cotton shirt.

Now, he could think all he wanted, but it wouldn't do him any good. The more he waited, the more difficult it would be to undo the damage. He forced himself to sit up slowly, trying not to use any of the muscles in his chest, and failing. He grit his teeth and let out a strangled cry as every part of him lit up once more. Not wanting to waste any energy on unnecessary magic, he carefully undressed, using one hand to unbutton his shirt while the other held him upright. His overcoat had survived, it seemed, but the shirt was completely ruined. Loki managed to toss them both aside with minimal effort, trying not to make enough noise to alert the neighbours. Once he was ready to move again, Loki took off his glasses and set them aside on the table, taking each action as slowly as possible. He didn't think his wounds would kill him, but he didn't want to risk making things worse and finding out. Every movement; every breath spent a spike of pain straight through him. For a fleeting moment, he thought he might welcome death if it meant the pain would end.

Since his hunting accident, however, Loki had learned some new tricks. He'd also learned that he had no talent at all for the healing arts, but that didn't matter. He had other talents that suited his needs just fine; talents that might have been called cheating if he cared about such things. At this moment, he cared only about one thing.

He placed his hand over his chest and breathed as deeply as he dared. Reaching out with his magic, he could feel every last trace of the guards' bullets. It wasn't like the round from the flintlock, easy to find and obvious. These rounds had shattered and deformed as soon as they broke the skin, scattering themselves to cause as much damage as possible. Finding all of it was difficult enough. Keeping his focus on the task was exhausting. He held onto each piece, banishing the fragments from his body. Twice, he nearly lost consciousness and had to stop to catch his breath, having to breathe slowly to keep from exacerbating his injuries.

Finally, he could no longer feel any trace of the metal inside his body. Confident that he'd found it all, Loki stopped to catch his breath once more. He could have ended it there, and would have healed eventually, but eventually wasn't good enough. Feeling his magic quickly fading, he summoned what he could and changed his shape to that of a small, black cat. The change itself was unusually painful his damaged body shifted to take on the new form. As he crawled out of his trousers, he was certain that it had been worth the suffering. A brief inspection proved his chest to be solid and whole once more, though he was still covered in his own blood.

He knew he should have done something about it, but by this point, he no longer had the strength to stay on his feet. Before he was even able to release his false form, he lost his grip on consciousness and the world around him went black.

* * *

Loki didn't know how long he'd slept, but at some point he'd lost hold of his magic. He awoke as himself, his dark skin largely devoid of hair of any sort. He hardly noticed as he looked around in a daze, hardly remembering how he came to be in bed in the first place. Finding himself covered in a thin layer of dried blood, he slowly began to recall the string of events that led to it, and his spectacular lack of judgement.

His sheets would need to be replaced, but it was low priority at the moment. First and foremost, Loki needed a shower. He sat up stiffly and looked down at his chest, rather pleased to find that his trick had prevented scarring, thus avoiding an embarrassing reminders of his own stupidity. Or at least, any more than he had already.

Rousing himself from bed, Loki forced his muscles to move him across the apartment, pulling a face at the bloody hand-prints on the wall. Every part of him was stiff and moved inelegantly, but it was nothing a hot shower wouldn't fix. It had taken him quite a long time to get used to such a novelty, but now that it was a common occurrence in his life, he didn't know how he ever went without them.

He stood under the water for with his eyes closed, wondering where he'd gone so wrong with his scheme, and whether he should find the eau-de-nil paint the wall already had or just redecorate in rust brown. Showing up without armour, for one, had been his first mistake. He'd also severely underestimated the fire power the humans now possessed. A flintlock and a musket had nothing on the weapons that man's guards carried, which was all the more reason they could not be allowed to have the Tesseract. The army that commanded it could raze the entire realm, and Loki had become rather attached to Midgard. If the humans destroyed themselves, he'd have nowhere to go when Asgard became insufferable. It wasn't as if the higher realms had anything new to offer. If anything, they were just as stagnate and unchanging as Asgard. And the idea of spending a weekend painting walls only seemed like a weekend wasted.

He'd simply have to try again, and this time, do it properly. Before the last amount of the hot water stopped, Loki quickly washed himself, scrubbing away any trace of his previous failed attempt. He nearly ran out of soap before he was done, but he felt better for it. Just being clean seemed to renew his energy, making the task before him not seem so daunting.

As he dried himself and dressed, Loki decided against taking on his Æsir appearance. Humans frightened easily, and he had a very distinct advantage on that level. He called forth his armour, forming it around himself with the simplest command. The hippogryph armour with the tall, sweeping horns on his helm fit him as well as it had the day it was presented to him. He had earned this armour, and he wore it proudly. Where Thor's eagle motif was regal, Loki's was threatening and menacing; almost villainous. What better way to frighten humans?

He took a moment to check over himself, making sure every stitch and plate of his armour sat perfectly on him. Beneath the shadow of his helm, his red eyes seemed to almost glow as he looked down at his vambraces, adjusting them over his forearms. Looking up again, he caught himself in the mirror and grinned a smug grin. Like this, he could start a whole new legend of creatures that went bump in the night. Loki found that thought rather pleasing.

The Tesseract wasn't singing, but that hardly mattered this time. Loki knew where he was going without that beacon of prayer to guide him. He stepped to one side, leaving his apartment and returning to the mountain fortress where the Tesseract was held. No sooner had he left, he found himself back in his apartment, one step away from where he'd started. Loki cautiously tried again, but the same thing happened, and once more he found himself back where he'd started.

"What the Hel?"

He hesitated to try a third time. Something was preventing him from gaining access to that place, which only meant someone was likely waiting to spring a trap.

It also meant they possessed very powerful magic; magic drawn from the Tesseract. Loki may have been a god, but this — whatever it was — was far bigger than him. He couldn't help but laugh despairingly at the thought.

He should have kept to the shadows and taken his time. He should have observed the situation more closely; learned where the Tesseract was held and taken it without fanfare. Instead, he put on a show. He was arrogant and presumptuous, and for it, he lost his chance.

For the first time since he could remember, Loki was completely without a plan.

He began to pace around his apartment, chewing his thumbnail as he rethought his strategy. Any magic used to block his travel would have to be powerful, and not easy to manage. It should have been impossible for the humans to have managed at all, and yet he still remained in his apartment, far from where the Tesseract was held. How long, he wondered, had he been asleep?

That would have to be his first step in forming a new plan. He needed to find out how much time had passed. He was certain that those with the Tesseract had not yet managed to achieve whatever their goals, but at the same time, he doubted his own certainty. With the Tesseract, one could do almost anything.

Loki banished his armour and put on what he'd come to call his human skin. It was identical to his Æsir appearance in almost every way, except for his fingernails. For the same reason he wore them black on Asgard, he couldn't on Midgard. They stood out far too easily.

He dressed quickly, finding his shoes kicked under his bed and his watch tangled in the blankets. Making sure he had a decent amount of money on him, Loki left his apartment and walked out to the street, where a group of boys were playing stickball. As Loki walked past them, he threw a handful of quarters onto the ground. At once, the game was forgotten as the boys scrambled to collect the quarters from the pavement, shouting at one another as they searched out every one. Loki let himself smile as he walked to the newsstand at the corner, finding no small delight in the sounds of chaos left in his wake.

Paying for the newspaper, Loki glanced down at the front page. According to the date, he'd been asleep for almost two weeks. He did tend to practically hibernate sometimes, but that seemed rather excessive, he thought. Determined not to do something so idiotic ever again, he flipped through the rest of the paper to see what other progress had been made. He began to wander down the street, hardly paying any attention to where he was going. The war in Europe was only growing bigger, and would eventually become too big to be stopped. His lip curled at the thought. The Tesseract would be misused sooner or later, and then not even Odin himself would be able to stand in the way of those who wielded it.

Loki stopped and folded the paper, feeling no closer to solving the problem than he'd been in his apartment. Loath though he was to admit it, he didn't think it was a problem he could solve on his own. Not unless he wanted it to kill him in doing so. He turned to start making his way home when a sign in a window caught his eye. It was a sign he'd seen hundreds of times already, but for the first time, he actually considered what was written on it. It was, he decided, the best option available.

So much for no more idiotic ideas. Loki was going to enlist.

He stepped into what had been turned into a recruitment centre, finding it abuzz with eager young men, literally lining up to enlist. Loki stood near the door, watching the movements of the room, trying to determine what he was meant to do. Almost at once, he realised a snag in his plan. Though he could understand the humans' language and appear to speak it, he didn't actually know it. He would be expected to fill out a small stack of paperwork, from the looks of it, but the only thing he knew how to write in their language was the name he used. And he'd only learned that because he'd been using it since he was a boy, and it was bound to sink in eventually.

He made sure that no-one was looking his way and cloaked himself to better slip through the crowds. He walked silently up to the desk in the centre of the room and began to peruse what few papers were visible. Slipping one of the folders from the stack, Loki stepped away and began to thumb through its contents. It had only the most basic of information, but even that Loki would have to forge. Unless they would accept 'some time during the summer of Odin's seventy-fourth year of reign' as a suitable date of birth.

Loki copied the folder and returned the original to the desk. Banishing the copies, he returned to the milling throng, where he let himself slip slowly back into view. Eventually, he managed to find a spot in the queue and looked around nervously like those around him. To speed up the process, a young woman walked down the line, handing out pens and clipboards containing black copies of the forms Loki had taken. He once more made sure no-one saw what he was doing and replaced the blank forms with the ones he'd made. He changed his name and shifted some of the numbers about so his deception wouldn't be quite so easily noticed. The person whose forms he'd copied was nineteen, which was a number Loki committed to memory, hoping he could pass for a human of that age. If not, he had other tricks, but he hoped to rely on them as little as possible.

The rest, he wasn't sure what to do with. Medical history and family information were both areas he didn't even know how to forge. Most of what was on his stolen copies was unremarkable, so Loki simply left it as it was, shifting only the numbers in the addresses.

Except for one. Next of kin. He was struck with a terrible idea and reached back to his apartment for an old letter. It sat, if it remained where it was meant to be, in a drawer by the window. He found it right where it should have been and pulled it out to look at the front of the envelope. Kitty liked to send cards for Christmas, and had sent him one with a whimsical dog wearing a bright red bow. The envelope, adorned with stylised sprigs of holly, had her address on the top corner. It felt a cruel thing to do, knowing how he intended his stint in America's military to end, but it seemed even more cruel to accidentally list an unsuspecting person elsewhere in the city. Loki changed the information on the form, listing Kitty Price as his next of kin. He copied the address from the envelope and sent the envelope back where he'd found it. Glancing over the information one final time, Loki brought his thumb to his mouth. Satisfied with what he'd done, he ran his thumb over the pages, working a charm into the paper that would make any who looked at it not think to second-guess anything. Just in case he hadn't been as thorough as he'd thought.

At the front of the queue, the man at the desk took Loki's forms and glanced over them. Loki watched patiently, refraining from giving the man's mind a slight nudge into accepting everything as legitimate. In the end, it wasn't necessary. After a few moments, the man behind the desk nodded and handed the folder back to Loki.

"On your left," he said, pointing to a corridor behind him.

Loki followed the directions and was met by a man in a white coat, who ushered him into a small room and took the file from him. The walls of the room had several anatomical charts hung up, as well as one sign, expressing the legality of lying on enlistment forms. Loki ignored that one and looked at the man instead.

"Luke Olson, correct?" he asked, looking down at the forms. Loki recognised him as one of the realm's healers, realising the purpose of this meeting. It only made sense that they wanted to be sure their potential soldiers would be fit for duty.

"Yes," said Loki, once more realising that he was in more than he'd bargained for.

"All right," said Dr Scott, snapping the file shut and setting it aside. "Strip down to your shorts. I'll be right back."

He left Loki alone in the room, closing the door behind him. Loki quickly undressed, setting his clothes aside on a high cot along the wall. Not for the first time, he wondered how wise his plan was. It wasn't as if the humans posed any real threat to him, but if he was caught, the consequences could have been disastrous. Suddenly, all he could think about was witch trials.

Dr Scott returned with a clipboard and motioned for Loki to sit up on the cot.

"That's a nasty scar," he said, pointing to the long slash across Loki's chest. "What was that?"

Loki looked down, momentarily annoyed that his scars didn't fade when he changed his skin. There was probably a way to make that happen, but he didn't exactly have the time to dwell on it just then.

"Hunting accident," he said. "My brother and I spent a winter hunting polar bear."

Dr Scott looked impressed. "You sure you he wasn't the one hunting you?" he asked.

Loki smirked. "I'm not the one hanging on his bedroom wall."

That got a laugh from Dr Scott. "Fair enough," he said. He wrote something down on his clipboard and reached for the device hung round his neck.

Loki wasn't sure what to expect from the examination, but he felt a bit underwhelmed by it all the same. He spent twenty minutes being told to breathe and cough and touch his toes, and being tapped and poked and prodded. At one point, he was led to a strange scale meant to weigh and measure him. Loki stepped onto it without thinking, causing the top portion to tilt with a dramatic clang. Dr Scott gave it a concerned look as he adjusted the weights, and Loki belatedly thought to take his weight off his feet. He still couldn't make himself as light on his feet as those around him, but a quick prod at Dr Scott's mind made him see what he expected to see from a man of Loki's size. Still almost sceptical, Dr Scott wrote his findings down on his clipboard and nodded.

The only thing Loki found remotely relevant to all the tests was when Dr Scott later asked him about the prescription on his eyeglasses, which Loki had to confess he didn't know. He'd stolen them from an unsuspecting man when he first began spending time in New York, and kept hold of them ever since because he rather liked the look of their round, brass frames.

Dr Scott at least didn't seem to find any of this out of the ordinary, and only had Loki read from a chart across the room. He seemed satisfied with the results, and after a few more pokes and prods, picked up the file from where he'd left it and added his notes to it.

"All right," he said. "I think that's all. Go ahead and get dressed and wait for someone to call you."

He left Loki alone to once more wonder if he was doing the right thing.

* * *

Loki walked up the stairs to the brownstone's door, hesitating only slightly before ringing the bell. Inside, he could hear muffled shouting as someone rushed to the door. Loki couldn't help but smile at it, somehow pleased to know that his family wasn't the only one to express opinions through rage and loud voices. An older boy quickly threw the door open and frowned at Loki, sizing him up.

"You here for Kitty?" he asked.

Loki gave him his best smile. "I am," he said.

The boy turned away, leaving the door open. "Kitty, there's some guy here for you!" he shouted. "Should I tell him to scram or what?"

Watching the boy start to wander away, Loki very nearly laughed.

"Who is it?" Kitty shouted back from somewhere inside.

"How the hell should I know?" The boy disappeared into another room as Kitty rushed to the door, her face brightening as she saw Loki.

"Luke. What the hell are you doing here?" she asked. Someone inside shouted, so she stepped out to the stoop and shut the door. "Family," she said apologetically.

"No worse than mine," Loki assured her.

"So, what's going on?" Kitty asked, not to be derailed. "You never just stop by. Is everything all right?"

Loki nodded. "Yeah. Everything's fine. I, uh. I enlisted. Just today."

Kitty's eyes went wide as she took a small step backward. "You what?" she asked. "Why? You're not even from here. You don't have to do that."

Loki shrugged. "They say you get citizenship if you enlist," he said.

"Yeah, but is that really worth it?" asked Kitty.

Loki didn't have an opinion either way, but if Luke Olson did, that would have been it. "I think so, yeah," he said, shrugging again. "And it seemed like the right thing to do."

Kitty looked up at him, an unspoken plea written across her face. "And getting shot's the right thing to do?" she asked.

"By the time I finish training, the worst of it will probably be over," Loki reasoned.

Kitty wrapped her arms over her chest and looked out at the street. Neither spoke for a long while, not sure what to say. Finally, Kitty inhaled deeply and faced Loki again.

"When do you ship out?" she asked.

"Monday," Loki said. "Just enough time for me to get everything sorted here, and then it's off to Camp Union for ten weeks."

"What about your family? Have you told them?"

Loki didn't like to lie outright, because it was too easy to get caught up in his own deceit. The easiest way to avoid trouble was to avoid talking about himself at all, but Kitty had a way of getting past all his defences.

"I was disinherited," Loki said, seeming to not be sure whether he should be angry or ashamed. "Why do you think I'm even here?"

"I did wonder," Kitty admitted quietly. "What did you do?"

Loki snorted, knowing that the two events had nothing to do with one another in the slightest.

"I plotted against my brother," he said, going with the more interesting story. "It wasn't treason, but it could have been had things gone any worse than they did. Mostly, I just publicly humiliated him."

Kitty looked up at him almost pityingly before sliding into laughter she couldn't control. Loki soon joined her, realising only then how ridiculous the whole ordeal with Thor had been. Suddenly, Kitty stepped forward and pulled Loki into a tight hug, burying her face in his overcoat.

"You better come back, you hear me," she said.

Loki gently wrapped his arms around her shoulders, content to remain like this for as long as Kitty wanted. He hated that it had to be like this, but it was truly the best way for him to disappear, he thought.

"Of course I will," he said. "I promise."

* * *

"I'm getting real sick of drills. When do we actually start training?"

Loki silently agreed with the private across the mess table from him. Training was coming into its second week, and so far, they'd done nothing but learn how to march and stand and salute. Nothing about it seemed useful at all, but Loki didn't dare try to contradict the drill sergeant and risk standing out any more than someone his size already did.

"We ain't ever gonna do any good over there if we don't start learning how to kill Nazis, you know?" Randal went on.

Loki looked up at him, almost surprised.

"You mean you don't already know how?" he asked.

Private Randal dropped his fork onto his plate and glared up at Loki. "Yeah? What the hell do you know about it, four-eyes?"

"Hey, shut up, all right?" the recruit next to him said. "Just leave him alone."

"No, I wanna hear what this guy has to say," Randal said, swatting Coulson away. "He's sitting over here like he's done all this before. I mean, you know. He must have, to be talking like this." He leaned back and levelled a sarcastic look at Loki. "So go on, then. Expound upon us all your knowledge of this subject."

Loki remained unfazed. "I'm afraid you wouldn't believe me if I did tell you," he said.

Convinced of his victory, Randal held his hands in the air. "See? Doesn't know a thing. Just as clueless as the rest of us."

"Well, at least you established that," Coulson said dryly.

Loki was fairly suspicious that Ray Coulson had lied on his own enlistment forms, but he couldn't be sure. He seemed younger than the majority of the men in his platoon, but it could have just been a quirk of biology. Several of the men Loki trained with seemed rather young. Either that, or more people were lying in order to join the army than anyone was willing to admit.

As Randal continued to despair upon the monotony of their training, Sgt Horton marched into the mess hall and called the platoon to attention. Ten minutes later, they all stood outside on a dusty patch of earth, listening to Sgt Horton give a lecture about the importance of unarmed combat skills. Loki dared a quick glance over to Randal, not surprised to see him looking rather pleased.

"I need a volunteer," said Sgt Horton suddenly. "Olson. Step forward."

Loki stepped forward as commanded, almost dreading what was about to happen. "Sir," he said.

"I'm going to demonstrate the basic defensive techniques," Horton. "Olson, I want you to hit me. Anywhere you like."

He stood with his hands at his sides, opening himself up for a strike.

"Sir?" Loki asked, really not liking where the situation was heading.

"You heard me, Olson. I want you to hit me," said Horton, already losing his patience.

"I don't want to hurt you, Sir," Loki said. Behind him, he could hear several of the other recruits laughing. Loki ignored it.

"Olson, this is your last chance," Horton said, raising his voice until he was almost shouting. "Hit me."

Loki refused still. Clearly annoyed at the defiance, Sgt Horton swung a right hook at Loki's face. Loki dodged as soon as he saw Horton's weight shift, grabbing him by his wrist and using Horton's own momentum to pull him off his balance. Without even thinking, Loki threw his elbow at the back of Horton's head, pulling the swing at the very last moment. The blow still connected harder than Loki had meant it to, and Horton fell face-first onto the ground. The whole thing was over before anyone even realised what had happened. Loki quickly stepped away as a nearby sergeant rushed over, kneeling beside Horton.

"I said I didn't wish to hurt him," Loki said calmly.

Around him, the other recruits murmured in shock, not quite sure whether or not to believe what they'd just seen.

Horton was roused and sat up, swaying slightly. He looked around him, his eyes glazed as his vision failed to focus.

"What happened?" he asked distantly.

"Come on," said the other sergeant coaxingly. He pulled Horton to his feet, holding him as steady as he was able. "Up you get."

Horton was led away, leaving the platoon alone on the training grounds.

"What the fuck?" Randal asked quietly.

No-one had an answer for him.

* * *

Loki sat outside Major Lee's office, wondering why he was even still there. They'd all but found him out, and nothing good ever came from being found out. He'd have to leave New York; stay away from Midgard completely until enough time had passed that they'd forgotten him. But if he did that, there might not be a Midgard to return to. His list of solutions was growing shorter by the day. Three times since his induction into America's army, he'd tried to return to the Tesseract while those around him slept, and each time he'd been forced back again. He supposed he could have just started wandering the realm until he found it, but even for him, with all his powers, that could take years.

The man who controlled the Tesseract was an enemy of America's and allying with the nation was the best way for Loki to find him.

He'd begun to lose track of the time when he was finally called into Major Lee's office. The major was a surprisingly old man, making Loki wonder just how effective their military could truly be if it was run by old men. He refrained from saying anything at all and stood at attention in front of Lee's desk, waiting to be reprimanded, or worse.

"At ease, son," Lee said.

"Sir," Loki said with a nod, shifting his stance.

Major Lee had a file open on his desk, which he read over slowly before shifting it. Loki could only guess whose file it was.

"You want to tell me what happened out there today?" Lee asked finally.

Loki nodded once. "I acted on reflex, Sir. I was taught when someone hits you, you hit them back."

"Except he didn't hit you, did he?" asked Lee.

"No, Sir," Loki admitted.

Lee nodded and grabbed a pen from a cup on his desk. Loki thought he might be about to write something in the file before him, but he just opened it and read it over again.

"Am I in trouble, Sir?" Loki asked finally, wanting to whatever discipline meted to him out of the way.

"Trouble?" Lee asked, incredulous. "No, son. I'm promoting you. Starting tomorrow, you'll be assisting Sergeant Horton in unarmed combat."

Loki was caught rather off-guard by the decision. "Ah. Yes, Sir."

Lee slid a small envelope across his desk to Loki, nodding at it. Still unsure, Loki reached forward and took the envelope, but he didn't open it just yet. Almost at once, Lee seemed to become occupied by the next matter.

"Dismissed," he said.

Loki nodded again, and saluted and turned to leave the room. Perhaps their army wasn't completely useless after all, if they were willing to utilise whatever talents they found in their soldiers. Loki made his way back to the barracks, finding the others preparing for a march. Loki was met with cautious stares as he made his way to his bunk, but he ignored the lot of them. As he put the envelope down on his bunk, he glanced over at Coulson, unable to discern what he was meant to be doing.

"What's going on?" Loki asked.

Coulson gave him a wary glance. "Full pack march," he said after a moment. "With first platoon, since…"

"I did tell him I didn't want to hurt him," Loki said wryly as he gathered his pack.

"Yeah," Coulson said, looking away again. "You pulled that punch, didn't you?" he asked suddenly. "My old man was a boxer, and I've seen it before."

Loki looked up at him. "I did, yes. Rather too late, I'm afraid."

Coulson looked back up at him. "Where'd you learn how to do that sorta thing, anyway?"

"Growing up," Loki told him, setting his canteen aside to be filled before the march. "It was just like any other daily lesson. Something everyone learned."

"Jeez, where'd you grow up?" Coulson asked, his expression shifting from apprehension to something closer to wide-eyed awe.

"Iceland," Loki said. "We're practically Vikings." He ran his fingers through his hair, still not used to the short cut of it. Even with the amount of Brylcreem he'd slathered in it, it still completely failed to behave.

Coulson snorted as he finished readying his pack. "I guarantee Randal won't be giving you any more grief after today," he said.

Loki grinned. "Yes, I did tell him as well, didn't I?"

"Yeah, I guess you did," Coulson said, laughing. "Maybe next time, he'll listen."

* * *

Loki found it surprisingly difficult to lead the platoon in physical training. Apparently the added stripe on his arm came with a small chunk of Horton's responsibilities. It wasn't that the training itself was difficult — in fact, it was childishly simple, and that was the problem. Loki would get bored doing jumping jacks and push-ups before he ever got tired from it. The humans he led could barely keep up with him.

The assault course was at least fun.

Sgt Horton timed them, sending them off through a maze of high walls, rope ladders, and various obstacles to be climbed over, under, and through. Years of running along precarious roof tops and dangerous terrain made days at the assault course the most familiar aspect of training. Loki started off with Coulson and Randal nearby, but lost them as soon as it came time to scale the first wall. A heavy rope hung down, which Loki was able to climb up with ease. He was actually surprised how much he seemed to miss so much physical activity.

He finished the course, panting happily as he dropped down from the climbing bars.

"What the hell are you doing here, Olson?" Sgt Horton demanded, looking incredulously at his stopwatch.

"I finished it, Sir," Loki said with a grin.

"Then get back there and do it again," Horton ordered.

Loki laughed. "Yes, Sir," he said, already running back to the beginning of the course.

He still finished before almost a quarter of the platoon, feeling rather pleased with himself for it. Randal stood hunched over nearby, his hands resting on his knees as he panted at the ground.

"That guy ain't human," he decided. "It ain't right."

"I heard they were doing experiments at Lehigh," another recruit, Kirby, said. "Maybe that's where they found him."

Randal shook his head. "It ain't right," he repeated.

Weapons training came during the second phase of training, and Loki found he once again had an advantage there. While some of the recruits were hunters and police officers, most had never handled a weapon any more dangerous than a kitchen knife.

Even so, the M1 was nothing like the muskets Loki had learned to use as a boy. While the basic function was the same — point it where you wanted it to fire and squeeze the trigger — no musket had ever tried to take his thumb off when he loaded it. Loki almost missed the hassle of wadding and powder and ramrods.

He lay on his stomach at the range and tried to force the clip into the rifle. Finally, it clicked into place, loosening the slide before Loki had taken his hand away. It shot forward, catching Loki's hand in the mechanism.

"Mother of Hel!" he shouted, struggling to pull his hand away.

Sgt Horton quickly rushed over to assist him in opening the slide, but found Loki already with his hand free. He had the side of his thumb in his mouth, sucking on the damaged flesh.

"Report to the infirmary, Olson," Horton said. Two others had already been sent away from the range to be treated for broken thumbs, and Horton was starting to sound resigned to half of his men washing out just because of their weapons misbehaving.

Loki took his hand away from his mouth. "I'm fine, Sir," he said. "Just caught the edge."

Horton levelled a sceptical look on him, but walked down the line as Loki took his position once more. Next to Loki, Coulson lay on the ground, ready to be told when to start trying to hit the targets at the other end of the range.

"You sure you're all right?" he asked.

Loki looked over at him and wiggled his thumb to prove it wasn't broken. "I'm tougher than I look," he said.

"You're crazy," Coulson replied.

Dangerous as it was, Loki also found the M1 impressive. Fiddly though the clip was, it held eight rounds. Even more impressive, the rounds could be fired as quickly as one could pull the trigger. Loki rather liked that.

It was also a precision weapon. One could point it in a general direction and had a good chance of hitting their target with practise, but the M1 was meant to be aimed. It took Loki a bit of time to get used to it, but he quickly grew to love the concepts of semi-automatic and aperture sights. He loved it so much, he qualified on the M1911 shortly after.

The M1911, he thought, might just have been his favourite weapon in a very long time. It fit better in his hand than his flintlocks, and produced far less blinding smoke. It also held seven rounds at once, making it that much more practical than anything Loki had used like it before.

One way or another, Loki was determined to keep both the M1 and the M1911 after he was finished with this ridiculous errand he'd found himself on.

The day before their final physical exam, the platoon was given a rare day to themselves. Not one to waste it, Loki got up and dressed, and then spent the rest of his day in his bunk with a book.

"You know, I don't understand you," Coulson said as he returned from the mess hall. "You got more energy than a jumping bean with a spring up its ass, but you're the laziest bastard I ever met. Have you done anything at all today?"

Loki shrugged dramatically. "I can sleep for days if you let me."

Coulson took off his jacket and stretched out on his own bunk. He pulled out a thin magazine from under his mattress and started flipping through until he found the page he'd left on.

"What are you reading?" Coulson asked, looking over at the book Loki held.

Loki showed him the cover. "What the Hel is a hobbit, actually?" he asked. "I've never heard of such a thing before."

Coulson laughed. "You never read the Hobbit before?" he asked.

"I'm not from here," Loki reminded him. He looked over at Coulson and frowned. "What have you got?"

Coulson showed him the cover, which depicted a man in blue with a shield, as he ploughed through a small group of Nazi soldiers.

"You remember that guy last month that was all over the papers?" Coulson asked. "Saved that kid and all that? My mom sent me this yesterday. I guess he's this big thing now."

"Is it any good?" Loki asked.

"Yeah, it's all right," said Coulson with a shrug.

Loki hummed speculatively. Suddenly, he closed his book and rolled over to face Coulson, causing his bunk to creak ominously. Spreading his palm out onto the mattress, he renewed the spell that kept the whole thing from just collapsing under his weight, letting him actually relax.

"Ray, can you do something for me?" Loki asked a moment later.

Coulson gave him a dubious look. "It depends," he said. "How much trouble am I gonna get into for it?"

Loki tapped his book against the edge of his bunk. "Our alphabet is different to yours," he said. "I can read reasonably well, but I can't do much more than sign my name. Not well, anyway."

"What?" Coulson asked, grinning. "You got a girl you want to send a letter to, but you never learned to write?"

"A friend, but basically, yes," Loki said.

"Yeah, all right," Coulson said. He put his comic aside and got up to dig through his foot locker. He pulled out a pencil and a small notebook and returned to his bunk. "All right, lover-boy. What's her name?" he asked. He licked the tip of his pencil and got ready to write.

Loki rolled his eyes. "Kitty," he said.


	3. Ragna Rök

Badolato was off the coast, but not so far inland that they couldn't still smell the sea when the wind picked up. The town was almost picturesque, with its stone buildings and narrow, cobblestone streets. It sat on a steep hill, each road sitting like steps climbing ever higher. The town was ancient, the architecture priceless, and if not for the bullets whizzing through the air, it would have been a pleasant place to visit.

The regiment had been charged with taking the Calabria region of Italy within the month, working slowly up the peninsula. Their target was Rome, and from there Austria, and then from there, Berlin. Simple, really. But first, they had to take and secure the most recent in what was already becoming a long line of heavily armed towns. Baker company's objective was to secure an unidentified factory, or possibly a warehouse or just a large barn, on the west side of town. Intel believed it to be manufacturing, or at least storing weapons, but whether they were right was still to be seen.

Coulson leaned back against the corner of the building, using a small mirror stuck on the end of his bayonet to see round the corner.

"Top window," he said, finally catching a glimpse of the illusive sniper that had their squad pinned down in the alleyway.

"Are you certain?" Loki asked.

Coulson peered into the mirror once again and nodded. "Yeah. Either that, or a very large pigeon." He slid the mirror off his bayonet and replaced both on his belt.

"Randal. Cover me," Loki said.

As soon as Randal was in position, Loki ran out onto the main road, cutting a diagonal path to the next intersection. He weaved in his steps, making himself a troublesome target. Still, the sniper fired off two rounds, the first hitting a nearby wall, and the second bouncing off the cobble by Loki's feet. A third shot rang out from behind him, and then everything went quiet. Loki could only assume the sniper had been neutralised, but he didn't stop running until he was safe on the other side of the street, where he skidded to a halt against the wall. He turned quickly, aiming his rifle back out to the road to offer recovering fire as the rest of the squad ran across the road in a tactical column. The sniper stayed mercifully dead, letting them cross.

"I think that was Via Roma," Loki said, peering back out onto the street. He couldn't see any sort of markers at all, and still wasn't completely convinced that HQ hadn't just made half of the intel up on the spot.

"No idea," Randal said, secretly agreeing with him. "These streets make no fucking sense."

"At least they don't have tanks," Ramirez offered, looking up at the two of them. "It could be worse."

"Yeah, it could be your sister, Ramirez." Randal adjusted his rifle, ready to run again.

Loki ignored them both. He'd been doing his best to take over the platoon leader's responsibilities without getting anyone else killed. Wars in the higher realms never came with stories of guerrilla warfare and snipers in tall buildings. The humans fought dirty, but Loki had no time to appreciate it.

"Give me the map," he said suddenly. "Who has it?"

"Wallace had it, sir," Ramirez said apologetically.

Loki banged his head against the side of the wall, pushing his helmet down over his eyes.

"Fuck," he hissed. He righted his helmet and peered out again, on the extremely off chance that something might have changed and would have been willing to help them out.

"We're sitting ducks here," he declared, getting a hold of himself. "Either this is Via Roma, and we're one street short of where we should be, or it's not and we're lost already."

He looked down the road in the other direction, toward where the sniper had been. The road curved slightly to the left before coming to a T-junction. It looked about right, but so did every other street so far.

"If we keep going, we'll just get even more lost," Randal offered pessimistically.

That thought had occurred to Loki as well. At the T-junction, only small shops stood, their windows already blown out from the fighting. Loki saw no sign of a factory or any sort of anything that might have been making weapons.

"What's the plan?" Coulson asked suddenly.

Either way, they were already lost, or they were exactly where they should have been. The plan, Loki thought, was obvious.

"Assume we're in the correct position," he decided. "This road offers cover. If we're where we should be, it's just a right up ahead, and that should just about put us at our rendezvous with Second."

He had no idea where the rest of Third platoon was, and had no time to think about it. They'd been cut off almost immediately, and Sgt Wallace's attempt to reconnect with them cost the squad three men, including himself. It wasn't exactly how Loki had pictured himself moving up the ranks.

"Clear all these buildings," he said, motioning down the street. "I don't want anyone coming up on us from behind. No-one else gets hurt out here."

He wished desperately to have been able to place a spell of protection on every one of them, but there were so many reasons he couldn't. Instead, he had to trust their ability to perform, and sent them out in twos. He waited for each pair to breach a building before sending out the next. Randal and Ramirez first, then Coulson and Kirby. After that, Jackson and Schmidt, and finally himself and Clarke. They ran up to the next unsecured house, Clarke taking a defensive position behind and to the left of Loki, aiming his gun at the middle of the door. Loki kicked the door in, raising his rifle up at once and scanning it across the room. It appeared empty, but to be sure, Clarke entered and cleared all the corners. With Loki covering his back, the two of them quickly made their way up the stairs, finding the two rooms up there empty as well. Most of the civilians had fled as soon as they heard the fighting coming, but the soldiers in the town stayed and held their positions fiercely.

Loki and Clarke left the house, quickly checking the road before running to the next closed door. Each pair made their way up the road, breaking in doors and clearing rooms in a deadly game of leap-frog. Finally, the squad came to the junction, lining up against the north wall as Coulson used his mirror to check round the corner again.

"Nothing that I can see," he reported. "Someone did a lot of work on this one already."

The road was littered with rubble and torn up by bullets and explosions. Whoever had caused the damage wasn't too far off, as the sounds of gunfire were louder, and had stopped moving away. Taking it as a sign that they were where they were meant to be, Loki nodded.

"Randal," he said.

Without a word, Randal once again took position to offer covering fire. Loki darted out, running up the steep hill and dodging around bits of building and holes in the road before stopping at the west wall of another T-junction. This time, no-one shot at him at least.

Those shots that were being fired were coming from the left, where — if they were where they were meant to be — they would find a large building of dubious purpose. Loki quickly scanned the road for trouble before turning to the group down the road. He waved them to follow after his steps, covering for them in return.

"Just over there," Loki said, nodding down the left side of the junction. "I do believe we've somehow come to be exactly where we should be. If not a bit late."

"We'd better get a move-on, then," said Coulson.

Momentarily forgetting himself, Loki grinned. "Let's go."

He dared a glance round the corner, confirming his suspicions. Not far down the road was a large, open space, encircled by a road on all sides, in a ring. On the eastern edge, three streets intersected the ring within meters of one another. On the northern edge, several tall buildings were lined up next to one another. They didn't look like any factory Loki had seen, but they weren't exactly barns, either. But they were undoubtedly the target, whatever they were.

Two of the three Baker company platoons had moved into position along each of the three roads, with First flanking around to the west side of the ring. Loki watched as Second platoon moved into position across the street, in another alleyway. Ready to give the signal to move, Loki held up his fist. Shots were being fired almost at random in an attempt to hold back any advance, but it was mostly blind fire — random bursts at the first sign of movement.

Suddenly, a canister flew through the air from Second's position, soaring down the narrow corridor and bouncing along the cobble. A few moments later, red smoke began to pour from the canister, followed almost immediately by an unrelenting spray of bullets from the not-factory. Loki signalled those behind him to advance, making sure they kept to the left wall. They were exposed on this side of the street, but that exposure also came with a better line of fire for them, once they were in position. Loki stopped the squad just before the smoke curtain, nodding for everyone to take cover along the bottom of the wall. The squad ducked down as low as they could get while shots were being fired from what seemed like all directions, ricocheting off the streets and shattering stone walls. They had to get cover, and they had to get it soon.

With Ramirez behind him, Loki kicked in the door to the small house, sending it nearly off its hinges. He quickly cleared the room and stepped inside, allowing the others to file in quickly after him.

"Find a way onto the roof," Loki told them quickly. "I'm going to see if I can find the rest of the platoon."

Several of the others nodded as Loki darted back across the street, to the relative cover provided by the north wall. Cries for a medic could be heard over the chaos as one by one, Italian bullets found targets. Not seeing anything useful nearby, Loki ran through the thinning smoke to duck behind a large armoured truck along with several others from Second platoon.

"You guys Third platoon?" their lieutenant asked, shouting to be heard over the noise.

"What remains of it," Loki answered.

Lt Davis gave Loki a startled and incredulous look. "Where the hell's the rest?"

Loki shot him an incredulous stare. Shots ricocheted off every surface around them, pinning them down. Two of the men in the group took turns popping out around either side of the truck, firing shots at the open windows of the not-factory before taking cover again.

"Where's First?" Loki asked, trying to peer around the truck as well.

"We lost our radio op," Davis said. He glanced round wildly, flinching when something clanged harshly against the other side of the truck.

Loki laughed, despite himself. "Of course you did." He peered out at the ring again, not seeing any sign of their rear support. "I'm going to see what I can find out," he announced suddenly.

Before anyone could question him, Loki darted out from the cover provided by the truck and ran down the south curve of the road. On his right, he was completely exposed, but his presence drew the enemy fire in his direction, allowing those still behind the truck to find targets in the open windows of the not-factory. On one of the roofs, a machine gunner began firing in Loki's direction, forcing him to find cover behind a low wall of sandbags. He skidded to the ground, ducking behind the bags as well as he could. With each round that struck the other side, Loki could feel the shock of impact rock through him. Angry at being shot at and stuck where he was, Loki pulled out his sidearm and shot randomly at the not-factory. Miraculously, after the third shot, the machine gun fire stopped. Whether it was a lucky shot on his part or a ploy to draw him out, Loki didn't care. Re-holstering his sidearm, he got up and this time cloaked himself before continuing down the road.

There was a small street branching off the ring at the southwest corner, from which first platoon was meant to take position. Loki found it, and before he even began to run down the steep slope, he immediately saw the problem.

The maps had been wrong. The street ended before it connected to anything. That would explain the absence of First platoon. Doubling back, Loki returned to Lt Davis, dropping his concealment just before dropping to the ground.

"I don't know where the Hel First is, sir," he said. "The road that was supposed to connect them to us doesn't go all the way through."

Davis pounded his fist against the side of the truck. "Shit," he hissed.

Behind him, a large man — larger than Loki, even — with an equally large blond moustache fired off a few more rounds before taking cover again.

"What's the plan now, sir?" he asked.

Without waiting for any further orders, Loki got up again and ran back the way he'd come. Using the confusion as a cover, he cloaked himself almost immediately and sprinted along the south bend again, this time passing what should have been First's position. If he remembered the maps correctly, and if the maps were correct, there should have been another intersection on the far west. Finding it, Loki cut south, spotting another intersection down a ways. Loki took a shortcut and teleported himself there. Peering cautiously around the corner, he could see several soldiers at defensive positions along the road, crouched along the high wall that lined the north side. Looking at the steep incline of the road, it was little wonder it the first didn't connect to it. It would have connected twenty feet above this one.

Loki let his cloak drop once more and sprinted to the nearest officer.

"I believe the maps are wrong, sir," he said almost flippantly.

The platoon leader frowned at Loki's sudden appearance. "You're not one of mine," he said.

Loki didn't bother answering that. "This way will get you back on track," he said, pointing up the road. "The way's clear, but the rest of us are taking heavy fire. We won't last much longer."

The lieutenant nodded and signalled his men to advance, letting Loki lead the way back to the not-factory. They quickly crept along the high walls lining the road, using it for cover against any sudden attacks. As they reached the ring, Loki broke off again to return to Lt Davis.

"First platoon's in position, sir," he said, leaning against the side of the truck as he panted heavily..

"You found them?" Davis asked incredulously.

Loki nodded. "I have what remains of Third up on the roofs, offering support," he said.

"You?" Davis asked, as if only then realising Loki's rank. "Where's your sergeant?"

"Lost him too, sir," Loki said simply. "Unless the rest of Third got mixed up with you, there are only eight of us."

"Jesus Christ," Davis muttered. "Get back with your men. Hold your positions. We'll draw their fire."

Loki nodded and rushed back to the door he'd kicked in, finding Jackson guarding it.

"Easy," Loki said quickly, finding himself staring straight down Jackson's barrel.

Jackson lowered his rifle and nodded. "The guys found a ladder in the back," he said, nodding his head in that direction.

Loki rushed out to the back, finding a tall ladder propped up against the wall. He quickly scaled it, climbing onto the flat roof to join the others, where they were situated out along the far edge, sights on the not-factory across the street. They occasionally took shots, not emptying their clips in an endless volley but waiting for the targets to open themselves up.

"Talk to me, Coulson," Loki said, dropping down next to him and raising his rifle onto the raised edge of the roof.

"You're fucking insane," was all Coulson had to say.

"Maybe," Loki agreed, grinning again. "No-one's heard from the rest of the platoon. First got lost, but they're back where they're meant to be. Second's getting ready to draw their fire for us."

Coulson nodded and adjusted his helmet as he got ready to fire. Leaving him to it, Loki got back up and quickly moved to the next group to tell them the same set of details, getting everyone back on track for the original plan. Almost as soon as he was settled again, heavy fire erupted from the west side of the lot, signalling Second's advance. In teams of four, Second rushed the lot, taking cover where they could while Loki and his men shot at anything that moved inside the not-factory, directing their shots to muzzle flares in the windows. They kept their attention focused on the task, ignoring the movements on the ground as best they could. Three of Second's men were hit in rapid succession, dropping almost immediately with anguished screams and cries for medics. Logically, they'd all expected to see people get killed. Expecting it didn't make it any easier to watch, so they didn't.

An explosion rocked through the west side of the not-factory, blowing a large hole in the wall. First platoon stormed the building, drawing attention away from second and freeing them to enter from the front at the west. An invisible skirmish raged for what felt like an eternity, obscured to those on the roof, before everything suddenly went quiet. Only the sounds of heavy footsteps on the cobble below could be heard.

"Hold your positions," Loki ordered. "This isn't over yet."

From their perch on the roof, they watched as the not-factory was secured and prisoners led out in single-file. Eventually, Lt Davis walked back out to the road and signalled for those on the roof to come back down. Loki went last, making sure everyone else made it down safely. He wasn't going to be the idiot to get these men through battle, only to have someone fall off a roof after ceasefire.

No-one fell and once everyone was safely on the ground, Loki led them back out to the street and walked over to where Davis was waiting.

"Battalion wants us to hold here so we can regroup and resupply," he said. "Take your guys and clear all these houses for stragglers.

Loki nodded tiredly. "Yes, sir," he said.

He turned and signalled his men into action, wondering when the day would be done.

The company quartered in the houses of Badolato. That morning, Third platoon had had thirty-four soldiers — one lieutenant, four staff-sergeants, eight NCOs, and the rest privates and corporals. That night, huddled in someone's abandoned house, there were eight — one corporal and seven privates. When Sgt Wallace's squad had been cut off from the rest, he led them down the wrong street in an effort to cut across the town and regroup later. The other three squads followed their map and found themselves blocked in a dead-end that shouldn't have been there.

The regiment had only been in Europe for three weeks, and already Loki hated every person who had ever told him a war story and left out the part about having to watch your friends get killed. Loki thought, as he sat huddled up in the corner of the room, willing himself to sleep, that he would gladly return to Asgard as a pacifist and embrace every accusation of cowardice if it meant never having to deal with war again.

He leaned against the wall, watching the others play cards at the table. They played cards and joked with one another because it was the only thing they could do. Dwelling on the losses of the day would drive a man insane. Loki sometimes thought himself already insane for being there in the first place, so he let himself dwell.

"Hey, Olson," Ramirez said suddenly, leaning around Clarke to look across the room. "There's a bed upstairs. Why don't you go get some sleep?"

"Someone else can have it," Loki said. He knew things were done differently on Midgard, but it would have felt wrong, as the highest-ranking soldier in the room, to have shown weakness and taken the one comfortable spot in the entire house.

He leaned his head into the corner of the wall and closed his eyes, focusing on the sounds of the cards being dealt and shuffled about. If he kept his attention on that, their conversation almost became white noise.

"Is he all right?" Clarke asked after a few moments, turning to look at Loki as well. "Should we send him back to the aid station or something?"

Randal and Coulson both looked over at Loki, where he seemed to have fallen asleep right there in the corner of the room.

"He's fine," said Randal. He put two cards face down onto the table, and Jackson dealt him two more. "You weren't in our platoon in basic. He does this all the time."

"What? Does something crazy and then freaks you all out?" Ramirez asked dubiously.

"Sometimes, he'll do both at the same time," Kirby offered helpfully.

Randal laughed. "Yeah, like that time he knocked out Sergeant Horton and then got promoted for it."

Jackson forgot all about the game for a moment. "That was him?" he asked.

"The one and only," Kirby said, almost proudly. "Frankly, I'm glad the see the crazy bastard act human every once in a while. It's like he's from another planet or something. When he goes on like this is all normal, that's when he freaks me out. And I could use a little less freaking out."

Coulson looked back at Loki and put his cards down onto the table.

"I'm out," he said, picking up his money.

He got up and sat beside Loki on the floor, not daring to touch him in case he actually was asleep. Loki opened his eyes anyway and turned to look at him.

"Are you all right?" Coulson asked, suddenly feeling the need to be sure.

"I'm just tired," Loki said, closing his eyes again.

He looked it, with dark circles under his eyes and a blank expression. Coulson could hardly blame him, though.

"Yeah, well. This is the first I've seen you stop all day. I'm not surprised," he said. He glanced back up at the table, where the conversation had already turned to women.

"You know, I heard Lieutenant Davis talking today," Coulson said suddenly. "He's recommending you for a battlefield commission."

Loki wasn't sure how to respond to that. Perhaps if he wasn't exhausted in every way possible, he might have been able to come up with a clever response. As it was, he just frowned slightly.

"Congratulations, Sergeant," Coulson said. "Keep it up, and at this rate they'll make you a general by Christmas."

Loki scoffed quietly. "I very much doubt that," he said.

* * *

By the week before Christmas, the regiment had made it as far north as Barrea, about 100 miles east of Rome. Baker company was dug in along the line about five miles outside of town. They were in a low valley, surrounded by trees and flanked to the north by a narrow river. Even with the ground covered with a light layer of snow, it was difficult for the men to feel too sour about their situation. With talk of Rome by New Year, a couple of weeks in a foxhole was worth it.

Loki sat in the one he shared with Coulson, reading through the comics Mrs Coulson still sent every week. Sometimes, mail would get backed up and the comics wouldn't come as regularly, but when everything finally caught up, it only meant that Coulson got a small stack all at once. In the latest collection, a new comic had been included along with Captain America. He was the Torch of Liberty, and he did basically everything Captain America did, only while wearing red and yellow and carrying a torch instead of a shield.

Not that it bothered Loki or Coulson much. Something new to read was something new to read.

As they shared comics back and forth, Randal slid into their foxhole without warning.

"You guys got any cigarettes?" he asked unceremoniously.

"I don't smoke," Loki and Coulson both said, not quite in unison, but both equally distracted.

Frowning, Randal reached for Loki's comic and tilted it back to better see the cover.

"I can't believe you guys read that crap," he said. "Don't you get enough of this bullshit here?"

"No, you see, the Torch of Liberty is in Japan, punching out Yamamoto," Coulson said. "I've never been to Japan or punched out Yamamoto."

"And Captain America is in Africa right now, stopping Hitler from finding the Lost Ark," Loki added helpfully. "We've never been to Africa, either. Nor do I know what the Lost Ark is, I don't believe." He finally looked up at Coulson. "What is the Lost Ark?"

Coulson laughed quietly as Randal picked up another comic from the stack on Coulson's pack.

"What, really?" he asked, thumbing through it, his curiosity now thoroughly piqued.

"What do you do with all these things, Ray?" Randal asked after a moment. "You haven't been humping these all over Italy, have you?" He stopped on a page depicting Captain America punching out Adolf Hitler. So maybe they weren't all that bad after all.

"I send them back to my mom," Coulson answered, turning a page of his own comic. "She puts them all in a box and sends me the next ones."

"Why?" asked Randal, getting drawn in by Captain America kicking some serious ass up in the Eagle's Nest.

"I dunno. They might be worth something some day," Coulson said, shrugging lazily. "Maybe if I keep them around, I can use them to send any future little Coulsons to school or something."

"I did similarly when I first went to New York," Loki offered. "My father has all sorts of old, dusty trinkets lying around. Worth a fortune, apparently."

Coulson once again struggled against laughter, his entire body faintly trembling against Loki's side. In front of him, Randal shook his head.

"Christ, Olson. You're insane, you know that."

"So I've been told," Loki said. He frowned down at the page he was reading, annoyed that whatever a Lost Ark was, it refused to translate. "Now could one of you please do me a favour and pretend that I'm from another planet and explain to me what the Hel a Lost Ark is?"

Beside him, Coulson lost the battle and dissolved into a fit of laughter, with Randal close behind. Annoyed though he was, even Loki had to laugh. He still wanted to know what a Lost Ark was, though.

* * *

Christmas drew nearer and plans were forged. Strategies began to relay through the regiment, with talk of advancing by Boxing Day. The problem with plans, everyone was quickly learning, was they so very rarely went to plan.

The line at Barrea was held without incident while the 107th drew battle plans and strategised and came up with the best way to take Rome. The southern routes had all been blocked off or heavily fortified, forcing an advance from the East from the mountains.

While Regiment HQ strategised, the Romans attacked.

Or, at least, Italian soldiers — a goodly portion of whom were probably from Rome.

No-one kept regular sleeping hours. They slept when they could, and while the line was quieter in the dark hours, it was by no means asleep. After so long of not having much to do, the men of Baker company grew bored and restless. It was nearly one o'clock in the morning, and many still milled about, talking quietly in one another's foxholes or playing cards by match light. Loki and Coulson were in their foxhole, attempting to make some sort of horrible K-ration stew over a small fire, using an ammo box as a cauldron. Loki hated K-rations; they were never enough, but at least by making them awful, he was less inclined to crave more.

The putrid stew was almost warm enough to be considered food when the shelling started; long-range artillery from the other side of the river. The only warning was a shrill whistle from above, and by the time anyone recognised it for what it was, the trees around them began to explode. Panic erupted as soldiers ran to take cover in the nearest foxhole, whether or not it was theirs. Loki didn't even think about what had to be done. He slapped out the fire and pushed Coulson down into the foxhole, using his own body as cover.

Lt Davis ran along the line, ducking and weaving around showers of splintered wood and ground that exploded at his feet.

"Take cover!" he shouted, barely heard over the din. "Everybody find a foxhole!"

As he ran, he guided confused soldiers into the nearest place of cover, making sure everyone else was secure before diving for cover himself. The foxhole he found was not empty, but had Loki and Coulson huddled down as low as they could get, Coulson barely visible. Loki noticed Davis at once, looking up with startled eyes. He liked Davis, and more, he respected Davis, but it was starting to become an uncomfortably tight fit.

Loki wiped his hand across his mouth quickly before reaching out to Davis to pull him close, missing the lieutenant's lapels and dragging his hand across his face instead. He yanked Davis close, huddling in the mud.

He didn't know how long he could maintain the spell, especially working it on two people at once. As long as he could manage it, they would not be harmed. Their foxhole could take a direct hit and the explosion itself would likely bounce right off the humans.

And if it didn't, well. At least all of their truly vital parts were shielded beneath Loki. At least being bigger than the rest of them was good for something. Being more durable certainly helped as well.

Everything around them exploded, shock-waves rocking through them for what felt like an eternity. It soon got to a point where the individual explosions around them no longer stood out, blending into a continuous, awful sound. Every so often, strangled cries for a medic could be heard cutting over the cacophony, but no-one dared rush out to the call. Limited though the cover of a foxhole was, it was still better than no cover at all.

Finally, mercifully, the shelling stopped. The following silence was both brief and terrifying, until slowly, cries for medics and assistance began to ring out. Cautiously, soldiers began to rise, but someone in the distance shouted for everyone to stay in their foxholes. Loki looked up, releasing his hold on the other two. The three of them peered over the edge at the destruction all around them, none quite sure what to make of any of it.

"Stay here," Davis ordered, before getting up to check the line with.

He got three steps away before he was shot, dropping to the ground as blood splashed out from his neck. Suddenly, fire erupted from the north in an almost continuous spray. Loki reached for his rifle, but before he could grab it, his vision was flooded with blinding light and he was suddenly very, very ill.

* * *

They followed a trail of nothing to Nowhere, Northern Scotland on the word of two quacks and a supposed medium. Half of what the so-called experts said didn't make any sense, and the rest was just plain factually wrong. But this apparently came from Roosevelt himself, so there they were in a wet, freezing hellhole with the sheep and the rocks.

The lead crackpot was a nervous, jumpy little man, and he insisted that something was happening that particular night at that particular abandoned, crumbling ruin. In the rain.

"Are you a Catholic?" Whitman asked him as he pulled out the rosaries.

"Yes," said Bruttenholm. "Among other things."

Whitman hated him already. He handed Bruttenholm a gun, which was of course refused, and then moved his men into position. All the while, Bruttenholm and his associate Frost wittered away about more nonsense, but Whitman had more important things on his mind. Like the Nazi soldiers he almost walked right into. He pulled Bruttenholm to the ground, signalling his men to take cover.

"They must be here for the sheep," Bruttenholm said dryly.

There wasn't any time to discuss what they were seeing, though. At least fifty Nazi soldiers, scientists, and other assorted Very Bad People rushed about with purpose, reading a huge, terrifying machine. Bruttenholm watched all of this through a pair of field binoculars, relaying what he saw to the others.

"This is worse than I thought," he said suddenly, handing over the binoculars, directing Whitman's line of sight. "Karl Ruprecht Kroenen."

"Hitler's top assassin," Frost filled in. "He's a member and adviser of the Thule Society."

The man Bruttenholm pointed out surveyed the scene from behind his gas mask, watching as everything worked as it was supposed to. He didn't seem to be directing anything. That job belonged to someone else. A someone else who was draped in a long cloak, looming over everyone around him.

"Oh, no," was all Bruttenholm said as Grigori Rasputin himself walked into view.

Over the rain, they could barely make out the words spoken between Rasputin and an SS General. After their brief conversation, Rasputin climbed a small flight of stairs, stopping at the landing to overlook the scene around him. With his arms outstretched, he was wired into the machine as it whirred into action. Coils hummed and hissed with electricity, slowly working itself into life.

When Rasputin began to shout to the heavens, Frost translated the words to Whitman as best he could. He wasn't fluent in Russian, and over the noise, it was impossible to hear everything, but he said the words as much for himself as for those around him.

"Seven is their number," Frost parroted. "Neither… Neither male nor female. They are the serpent… They are the… beast."

Whitman looked between Bruttenholm and the scene before them. This was not what he'd signed up for. It was not what he ever expected to come across.

"What the hell's going on?" he asked, cutting over Frost.

Bruttenholm watched, transfixed as he slowly realised what he was seeing.

"Oh," he said gravely. "He's summoning chaos gods."

It was all Whitman needed. He primed a grenade and threw it over the low wall, ducking for cover just before it exploded at Kroenen's feet. Whitman's men rushed over the wall, opening fire immediately. The response was swift, and soon bullets flew from every direction. Still, Rasputin continued his ritual undaunted, seemingly unaware of the chaos and carnage around him. His hands lifted high above his head, he called forth the seven demon gods of oppression; seven on heaven, seven on earth. The machine began to cast off its own light as it tore a hole in the very space around it, pulling anything not nailed down into its event horizon.

It had to be stopped.

Frost and Bruttenholm scrambled for cover behind a low wall as Kroenen fired at everything not wearing an SS uniform. Every one of his shots found a target. Bruttenholm felt the hard bite of the bullet pierce his leg, just above the knee, and he fell to the ground at once. He wasn't a soldier; he hadn't been trained for this. He tried to grit his teeth and block out the pain that shot through his side with each movement. There was a downed soldier only a few feet away with several grenades on his belt. Bruttenholm had to make it just that far.

Kroenen levelled another shot at Bruttenholm as he crawled across the stone ground, but at the click of an empty magazine, he reholstered his luger. Standing with his arms rigid, two long blades fell from inside his sleeves. He followed after Bruttenholm, stalking him like a predator sure of his kill.

Suddenly, he was hit in his gas mask-covered face by a small piece of stone. His attention shot from Bruttenholm to Frost, who cowered behind the low wall as he suddenly realised the consequences of his plans.

But it had distracted Kroenen, and it was exactly what Bruttenholm needed. He reached for a grenade from the soldier's belt, primed it, and threw it at the machine. Kroenen immediately forgot about the two of them and dove after the grenade. It had lodged itself directly under the spinning mechanisms, and before Kroenen was able to get to it, the grenade exploded, knocking out half of the machine's supporting trusses and spraying twisted metal in every direction. Kroenen too was knocked back from the blast, flung across the courtyard and impaled upon a spike that had become lodged in a crumbling wall.

The machine immediately collapsed in upon itself, and the event horizon it created suddenly became deadly unstable. It pulled everything nearby into it, man and machine alike. Before Rasputin was able to disconnect himself from the machine, it pulled him in as well, skin sloughing off his face as he resisted. Finally, he was pulled off his feet entirely, and after a flash and a scream, he was gone and everything was silent.

All that remained in the event horizon's place was a man, stood doubled over and breathing raggedly. He wasn't one Whitman or anyone else recognised, nor had he been there before. Despite warnings to stay where he was, Bruttenholm pulled himself to his feet and limped toward the unfamiliar figure cautiously.

Without bothering to look up, Loki drew his sidearm and levelled it on Bruttenholm. Almost immediately, several soldiers behind Bruttenholm raised their rifles as well, but Bruttenholm held out his hands.

"No, put your weapons down," Bruttenholm said. "He's one of ours. Look at his uniform."

They did, slowly, as Bruttenholm stepped closer to Loki. His breathing ragged, Loki still kept his pistol raised. His hand shook so badly that anything he did hit would have been purely accidental, but he wasn't quite ready to lower the one defence he had at that moment.

"It's all right," Bruttenholm assured him. "I'm not going to hurt you. You're all right. It's safe."

Loki finally looked up at Bruttenholm and lowered his pistol. With his gun at his side, Loki dropped his head again and forced himself to stay on his feet. Bruttenholm stepped even closer, sitting on the ground in front of Loki and looking up at him.

"What's your name?" he asked quietly.

It took Loki a long while to feel like he could respond without being sick. If this was what it felt like for Thor to be teleported by Loki's magic, then he truly was sorry for every instance of it.

"Olson," he answered finally.

"What's your real name?" Bruttenholm asked, even more quietly than before.

Loki looked back up at him, and in that instant, he knew. This human knew what he was. He'd failed in every possible way, and he didn't even know how. And this human knew him for what he was and had the audacity to question him about it.

"I believe something else was brought through," Loki said instead. "You may wish to investigate."

Bruttenholm's eyes went wide behind his spectacles. Nodding, he turned round to address Whitman and Frost.

"He believes something else was summoned," he said.

For just a second, all eyes were off Loki as everyone looked cautiously around. It was all the time Loki needed to disappear. By the time Bruttenholm turned back, Loki was gone.

* * *

Loki had no idea where he was. Worse, he didn't think he had the magic to get any further than he'd managed already. He'd broken one of his own rules: travelling without knowing his destination. In his panic, he simply fled. Now, he was on a moor, but mercifully, not completely stranded. In the distance, he could see a small base camp of some sort. Even better, it flew an American flag. Running short on options, Loki stumbled forward, not daring to use any more magic than he already had. He might be able to make it to the camp with magic, but more likely, he would arrive unable to conceal himself, and of a distinctly wrong colour. Not even the integrated units had any blue people in them.

He didn't know how long it had taken him to cross the moor. Days, maybe, except the sun never rose once. Perhaps not days, then. But most of the night, surely. He struggled to stay on his feet, refusing to sit and rest, lest he fall asleep and be discovered by a patrol. As he closed the gap, he realised that the settlement he approached was not a temporary thing, but a small village, nestled on one side against a small wood. A low, stone wall ran along the edge, ancient and sturdy. The buildings themselves were all varying ages, having replaced one another over the years. It was one thing he found that set Europe apart from New York. Buildings in Brooklyn may have been old. Buildings in Europe were ancient.

There had been elk here once. Now there were Americans. And one of them, Loki noticed, was praying. It was an odd prayer, to no-one, to everyone, to anyone who would listen. It at least did not pull him by force. It was also terrified. On those merits alone, Loki answered, letting the words take him where he was needed.

Loki found himself in a small room in a small house, and suddenly very much unable to support his own weight. He stumbled sideways, crashing into a small table. It collapsed beneath his weight, alerting the one who prayed with a startled yelp. Possibly his worst entrance yet.

He felt someone gripping his arms, uncertain but strong, helping him sit up.

"Oh. Oh, my."

Loki looked up, but sure if he should be surprised or not.

"You," he said, eyes falling upon Bruttenholm. "You were praying."

"Yes, I—I suppose I was," said Bruttenholm. "How did you get in here?"

"You were praying," Loki repeated.

Bruttenholm looked at him, understanding something, but not enough. They both knew it. Finally, Loki decided to break another rule answer Bruttenholm's first question.

"Loki," he said.

"Oh." Bruttenholm studied Loki's face, trying to reconcile what he saw with what he knew. "Oh, yes. I suppose I was expecting red hair."

He seemed to be taking the sudden appearance of a god in his bedroom surprisingly well. It was a worrying prospect in many ways. Suddenly feeling very vulnerable on the floor, Loki braced himself against the wall and heaved himself to his feet, only to stumble immediately after. Bruttenholm reached out to steady him, only to be knocked off balance himself.

"What was he doing?" Loki asked, leaning against the wall. "I don't know why I'm here. I was… kind of in the middle of something."

Bruttenholm knew things most people ignored. He knew all the old stories were true, and that they were all in equal measure false. It was his job to know these things. And right now, one of the reasons he had this job was barely able to stand, so Bruttenholm did the only thing he could do. He reached out and led Loki to the nearest armchair. He limped heavily as he led Loki across the room, getting him settled just to make sure he didn't break anything else. Once everything looked secure, Bruttenholm nodded once and made his way downstairs to put the kettle on.

The house belonged to an old woman, who was thankfully rather deaf. A small company quartered there in the town because of its close proximity to the old abbey Bruttenholm and Frost knew to be a spot of paranormal activity. And now, he made tea for a chaos god he saw summoned not two hours before.

He brought the cup of tea upstairs to his room, and set it on the table beside Loki.

"He was summoning gods," Bruttenholm answered finally.

Loki closed his eyes, and for a moment, Bruttenholm thought he may have fallen asleep.

"There are an awful lot of us," Loki said.

Bruttenholm laughed nervously. "I know," he said. He moved across the room at sat on the bed, taking his weight off his leg. "I believe he was summoning a very specific type of god."

Loki shook his head tiredly. He'd answered this prayer, and was bound to the help he implicitly offered in doing so, but he was simply too exhausted to do any of it properly.

"That's… what of the other one?" he asked.

"Yes, we found him as well," Bruttenholm said quickly, trying to keep all inflection from his voice. Just in case what was done and what was desired weren't the same things. "He's been handled and dealt with."

Bruttenholm was lying somehow. If he were more awake, Loki might have even seen how.

"Good," he said. "I… If you don't mind, this was my first involuntary summoning. I'm rather exhausted from it."

"Oh, yes. Of course," Bruttenholm said. "I can't imagine that to have been pleasant."

Loki was already struggling to keep his eyes open, and was growing tired of doing so. "I may do something strange while I sleep," he said. "I'm fine. It's just a thing I do. Guard the door. Let no-one in."

It was a foolish thing to fall asleep in his current position. Suicide. Especially with the tenuous hold he had on his magic. The problem was, once again, he was completely out of other options.

He didn't hear Bruttenholm's response, falling asleep almost immediately. That night, he dreamt of fire. He'd had horrible nightmares of Eldjötnar as a boy. He didn't remember what these were about, other than horrible monsters from a strange realm, but this one was very clear. Loki was trapped with a sword he could not wield — huge and beautiful with a perfectly undulating flame-blade. Before him, the monster that plagued his dreams as a child, huge and imposing, towered over him. There was red fire in its flesh that would surely cause Loki to melt with a single touch. The monster was so close, and Loki could feel his heat; feel himself start to melt, but he could not lift the sword to protect himself or those around him.

Just before the monster touched him, Loki woke gasping, covered in a sheen of sweat. He pushed the heavy quilt that covered him to the ground, realising as he did that at some point in the night, he'd lost his glamour.

No wonder he felt so hot. He glared at the quilt, still breathing hard. That must have been it, surely.


	4. Shell Shock

Loki found his glasses on the table next to him, along with a cup of cold tea. Out of habit, he picked up his glasses, ignoring the tea, and slid them on before looking around the room. He was alone, but Loki still changed his skin, making sure that if he was seen, there was nothing outwardly unusual about him. The rest — his presence in a place he should not have been — he could manipulate. Looking every bit like the alien god he was, not so much. Once it became clear he wasn't about to be ambushed (in fact, Bruttenholm was conspicuous in his absence), he found himself curious about the room he was in. Loki got up to look around, ignoring the tiny voice in his head telling him to just leave. It was a voice he was very good at ignoring. The room itself was very plain. A small bed against the wall, the broken table that Loki had destroyed near the door. There were a few low shelves along the wall opposite the window, sparsely used, as if the room itself belonged to no-one. On the table between the armchair in which Loki had spent the night and the bed, there was a thick folder with an army stamp on the front. Official business, then. Soldiers quartered in civilian homes; a practise Loki was well familiar with. But Bruttenholm, he could tell, was no soldier. Loki would be a fool to ignore any information he was given, then.

He stood in the centre of the room, flipping through the pages, though little made sense. The orders were straightforward enough. Professor Trevor Bruttenholm was attached to the 86th Infantry Division to aid in the defence against Axis paranormal powers. The orders themselves were barely a week old, and already they seemed to have got far more than they bargained for. Surely, no-one expected whatever dark magic they had stumbled upon the night before.

Loki wondered if they knew anything of the Tesseract.

Nothing in the small stack of paper mentioned it, so probably not. Loki put the folder back where he found it and moved to the window. He didn't remember much of his first visit to Midgard as a young boy, but he was certain this was the same place. It felt the same. There was still magic to be found on Midgard, and this place still held it.

Loki heard footsteps, heavy and uneven, on the stairs. He turned as the door opened, watching Bruttenholm limp into the room. He carried a large tray with several small plates and another cup of tea, balancing it precariously with one hand as the other supported his weight against the wall. Bruttenholm looked at Loki for a long moment, regarding him as if surprised to see Loki awake at all.

"I thought you might appreciate a spot of breakfast," Bruttenholm said, nodding down at the tray.

Loki didn't hesitate to move across the room to the offer of food that didn't come in a small, cardboard box. Eggs, bacon, ham, toast, beans; the first proper meal Loki laid eyes on since New York. He went immediately for the bacon, using it to break the yolks of the eggs before shoving the whole strip into his mouth.

Watching him, bemused, Bruttenholm wondered whether he should have offered more than he did.

"I can't help but wonder why I found myself in your company twice last night, Professor," Loki said around a mouthful of toast.

"Professor Broom, yes," Bruttenholm confirmed, for the first time showing his nervousness. "How did you…"

Loki looked up briefly and pointed to the folder sticking out from under the breakfast tray.

"Your orders," he pointed out. "I'm not that sort of god."

He seemed to only just then notice the fork on the side of the tray and used it to push some of the beans onto the last slice of toast so he could eat both at once. Once he started, he found himself unable to stop. After so much time living on K-Rations, even a simple fried meal as this was as good as ambrosia.

Bruttenholm nodded slowly, accepting Loki's explanation.

"My colleagues and I specialise in the paranormal, as I'm sure you know," he said. "We've been investigating certain members of the Nazi party for several years now." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, resisting the urge to reach for the rosary around his wrist. "It seems they've acquired some rather unusual allies."

Loki raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing. Mostly because he was too busy finishing off the last of the bacon.

"Grigori Rasputin," Bruttenholm clarified.

Loki swallowed. "He's dead. I was there. It was hilarious."

Bruttenholm reminded himself just who exactly he'd fed breakfast. Relatively few people could actually lay claiming to bringing about the end of the world, and fewer still had a track record for it.

"Yes, apparently not," Bruttenholm said slowly. "He's the current leader of Hitler's Project Ragna Rök."

Loki forgot all about the last remains of his breakfast and levelled a deadly serious gaze on Bruttenholm. "I find that to be in extremely poor taste," he said.

"As do I, considering the project's apparent goals," Bruttenholm said, just as seriously. "Last night, we learned that he meant to summon chaos gods to this world."

"Chaos gods?" Loki asked. He paid woefully little attention to the humans' many beliefs, but it was starting to seem as if he needed to remedy this gap in his knowledge. At this moment, however, he had an even more important question.

"What sort of idiot summons chaos gods and expects it to end well?" he asked. "Either way, it doesn't seem to have worked for him, if all he got was me."

This time, it was Bruttenholm's turn to raise an eyebrow. "Oh, I wouldn't say that," he said.

Loki moved over to the window again, looking out over the town as it slowly woke in the early morning. "What makes you so certain he was after what you say he was?" he asked.

"It was the wording," Bruttenholm said, keeping his eyes on Loki. "Of the spell he used. Seven, neither male nor female."

Loki turned an incredulous eye on Bruttenholm before pulling on the front of his waistband and looking down his trousers. "No, definitely male," he said. "Unless you'd care to offer a second opinion?" He started to unbutton the flies of his trousers.

Bruttenholm concealed a chuckle behind his fist and looked away. "No, that's… I'll take your word on it, I think."

Turning back to the window, Loki rolled his eyes. "And where is he now? Licking his wounds somewhere, I imagine."

"As far as we can tell," Bruttenholm said, sobering. "He was drawn into the very portal he opened."

At that, Loki snorted. "Good."

Looking out at the town below, Loki wondered how easily he might be able to talk himself into a shower. Judging by the age of most of the buildings, he thought it unlikely. The concept of indoor plumbing might have been little more than a myth to these people.

"After I left last night, you prayed," Loki said. "It was a very unusual prayer. Not one I've heard in a long time."

"I must confess, I didn't think anyone still listened," Bruttenholm admitted uneasily.

Loki turned back to study him once more, unsure what to make of a man who carried a rosary and spoke as if he knew more than anyone else in the room.

"We're not supposed to," Loki told him. "It's forbidden. I only answered because it seemed preferable to passing out on the moor."

Bruttenholm nodded, slowly at first but then with thing. "I suppose it would be foolish to ask for your assistance," he said dryly.

Loki grinned wryly and looked down at his uniform. Perhaps not as foolish as Bruttenholm might think.

"What do you know of the Tesseract?" he asked, changing the subject.

Bruttenholm went very still. He looked up at Loki with unveiled fear, which did nothing to quell Loki's own.

"It's been lost for centuries," he said.

Loki frowned and looked at his watch. A pointless gesture, but theatrical all the same.

"Oh, no," he said, shaking his head. "Only a few months. It was taken from Tønsberg in June."

"The Nazis?" Bruttenholm asked, already knowing the answer.

"Hydra, to be precise," said Loki. "Johan Schmidt. I found him once, and now he uses the Tesseract against me. I wish to find it and claim it for myself."

He looked to Bruttenholm, grinning at the wary look the man wore.

"Don't worry. I wish to remove it from this realm," Loki said. "I have a summer home in New York. I'd hate to see it come to harm."

Bruttenholm relaxed only slightly, though his expression hardened. "I see," he said. "While the enemy of my enemy may be my friend, the lesser of two evils is still evil."

"You wound me deeply, Professor," Loki said facetiously, clapping his hand to his chest.

Bruttenholm watched him with a wary eye. The Loki of legend was a powerful being, and equally petty and unstable. Whatever force Bruttenholm unwittingly invited into his room, it was not to be treated lightly.

They studied one another, neither saying anything for a long moment. Finally, Loki moved away from the window and sat down on the bed, putting himself at the same level as Bruttenholm.

"I am not the enemy here," Loki said evenly. "I only wish to retrieve that which should not have been left on this realm in the first place. Considering what is being done with the Tesseract, I would consider this goal to be in our mutual interest."

Bruttenholm laughed nervously. "You'll have to excuse me if I seem a bit sceptical," he said.

Loki fought a sneer. It was bad enough all of Asgard, Vanaheimr, Jötunheimr, and possibly Niðavellir thought him a cheat and a liar. Apparently that reputation had followed him to Midgard as well, despite his best efforts.

"Of course," he said stiffly as he rose to his feet once more. "I would expect nothing less, after all. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get shot at some more. I did rather mean what I'd said last night about being in the middle of something, and I do hope they've not finished without me."

Without waiting to see what Bruttenholm had to say, Loki returned to the woods outside of Barrea. As it happened, they had finished without him. The line was all but abandoned, but right away, Loki knew it wasn't because of any advance. They'd been ambushed the night before, and now the line was in complete disarray. At least someone had taken the time to deal with the dead and the wounded, however many there might have been, but that only went a short way in restoring the order that had been here the day before.

Cloaked from the few who still remained, Loki dropped down into his foxhole to collect his gear. The supplies and personal belongings of the soldiers had not yet been collected, it seemed. Whatever happened in Loki's absence, it had only recently ended.

Along with his own pack, Loki found Coulson's as well. He still had comics in there. Loki knew he wouldn't have just left it if he had any choice. Loki quickly moved the comics from Coulson's pack into his own and put both back where he'd found them, hesitating slightly. He wasn't even sure why he'd taken the comics, or what he planned on doing with them, but he couldn't just leave them where they were, to be picked over by replacements. Coulson deserved better than that. He looked around the foxhole, a little lost. Then it occurred to him. This could be perfect. He was getting nowhere with the humans as allies, while Schmidt moved farther and farther away.

Loki never was terribly good at judgement calls, especially since he had a pesky tendency to be damnably honourable. He took off his eyeglasses and made a quick copy of them; distorted and imperfect, but good enough for his cause. He slid the original pair into his pack and dropped the copy to the ground, stamping his heel over them. The crunch they made was rather satisfying beneath his boot, which meant he was getting better at tangible items. That, at least, was pleasing. When he picked the glasses up again, the frames were mangled and both lenses cracked and broken. Perfect. He slid the glasses into his front pocket and picked up his rifle and removed the clip, replacing it with a spent one from the ground. Satisfied with his work, he left the foxhole and reappeared about fifty meters away.

Loki dropped his concealment then and started to make his way back to the line, stepping carefully, but with excessive noise like any other blundering human trying to avoid tripping over the underbrush. Someone soon heard him and moved out to quickly investigate. Loki could see the movement through the trees, but he waited until he heard their footsteps to swing his rifle round in a wide arc.

"Who's there?" he called out, looking around wildly.

"Jesus Christ. Olson?" Randal called back.

Loki looked toward the direction of Randal's voice, squinting as if trying to peer through a heavy fog.

"Over here," he called back, sounding as if he was trying not to sound frightened.

Randal trotted over to him, dropping his rifle to his waist as he approached. As he came nearer, Loki lowered his own weapon tiredly.

"Damnit, Luke. What the hell happened to you?" Randal asked.

Loki looked at his sheepishly and pulled the mangled spectacles from his pocket.

"Had a bit of a rough night," he said.

Randal took the glasses from him and winced at the sight of them. Curious, he brought them up to peer through the less-damaged of the two lenses.

"How'd you not wind up 4-F'ed out?" he asked, blinking away the strain from trying to see through Loki's glasses.

Loki gave his best nervous laugh. "Careful. I wouldn't want anyone to think I might actually be human after all," he said. He pretended not to see the incredulous look on Randal's face.

"I have a spare in my pack," Loki said, more seriously. "I wasn't even going to try to find my way back in the dark."

"Yeah, all right," Randal said.

He slung his rifle over his shoulder and took hold of Loki's elbow, guiding him through the underbrush. "Come on, Helen Keller. Watch your step."

"Who?" asked Loki.

Randal rolled his eyes. "Nothing. Where's your pack?"

Loki stumbled over nothing and shot the ground at his feet an angry glare. "Right where I left it, I should hope."

Randal led him back to his foxhole, staying near as Loki felt around for his glasses. He found them right where he'd put them and slid them on, blinking to adjust the distortion. It wasn't until some time after he'd started wearing them that he learned that the man he'd stolen them from was practically blind without them. At that moment, it suited his means rather well, if it would get him out of having to explain his sudden reappearance to the company.

Loki looked around, only then reacting to the sorry state of it.

"Where the Hel is everyone?" he asked, genuinely curious.

Randal frowned and shifted awkwardly. "We're, uh. We're it," he said. "We're just waiting on reinforcements. I guess the company's yours again."

Loki frowned at the sight of it. There couldn't have been more than twenty people, and they all looked as miserable as they ever had. He didn't think he wanted to know what he'd missed, when it came to it. His pack was lying on the ground near the wall. He picked it up and slung it over his shoulder, and looked around at the bedraggled company.

"I… I should go report to HQ before anyone back home gets any unfortunate letters," he said. "Get some rest."

He climbed out of his foxhole and made tracks toward the road at the rear. Randal followed after him, unsure of what else to do.

"You got a family?" he asked.

Loki shot him a disbelieving glare. "No, John. I appeared on this planet fully-formed two years ago. Didn't you?"

Randal snorted. "Yeah, I bet you did, Olson," he said. "Where's that home planet of yours again?"

"Second star to the right, and straight on till morning," Loki said distantly. Behind him, Randal snorted again.

Looking out at the road to Barrea, Loki rather envied the Lost Boys then. He wondered why he didn't take the opportunity to leave.

There were several jeeps parked outside the tents that made up company HQ, but beyond that, no sign of any commanding presence. It seemed once again, the company had fallen into his hands. He didn't even want it. The sooner someone else came in to replace the officers, the better.

"Come on," Loki said, nodding toward one of the jeeps. "We can resupply in town, assuming it's still there. And when they shoot me for desertion, you can bring everything back."

He climbed into the passenger seat of the jeep, putting his rifle in the space between the seats.

"You don't want to drive?" Randal asked, getting behind the wheel anyway.

Loki shook his head. "I don't know how," he said.

"Really?" asked Randal.

"I live in New York," Loki said. "Why would I ever need to know?"

Randal shrugged and settled his rifle along with Loki's before starting the jeep.

Regiment HQ was in Barrea proper, and had been just as heavily hit as those out on the line. The town Randal and Loki drove into was not the one they remembered taking weeks earlier. There had been some damage done then, but not to the extent Loki and Randal found now. Buildings barely stood and the streets were in shambles. Randal stopped and pulled over at the first space large enough as he and Loki looked out at the damage.

"What sort of psychos bomb their own towns?" Randal asked.

"Those who have become disloyal," Loki said. He looked over to Randal. "Assuming it was even the Italians who dropped the bombs."

"Well, it sure as hell wasn't us," Randal insisted.

Loki kept his theories to himself as the two of them climbed out of the jeep and tried to find someone to report to. They found their Battalion HQ in an old house with half the top storey missing. What remained of the officers scrambled about to regroup, darting in and out of the house like giant green ants. Standing by a desk near the front door, Colonel Phillips dictated a next-of-kin letter to a young staff sergeant at a typewriter. Loki stood out of the way of the door, letting Phillips finish his depressing task before interrupting.

"Sir," Loki said.

Phillips turned his exhausted gaze to Loki, took one look at his rank, and became even more exhausted.

"What is it?" he asked, picking up his cigar from the tray on the table.

"Luke Olson, Baker company, second battalion," Loki said. "I got a bit separated last night, and came back to find no company commander to report to, sir."

A brief flash of what might have been sympathy flashed over Phillips' face as he turned to his sergeant at the typewriter. The two of them each picked up stacks of freshly-typed letters and began thumbing through them. Finally, Phillips pulled one from his stack and tore it in half.

"Do you have any idea how many of these letters I've signed this morning?" he asked, dropping the paper into a small box by the desk.

"I'm getting an idea, sir," Loki said.

Phillips picked up his roster and updated it, taking a small amount of pleasure in the small change.

"Report to Captain Matthews. He's around here somewhere," he said finally. "You boys are being taken off the line. Just in time for Christmas."

"Yes, sir," Loki said tiredly.

He nudged Randal out the door as he turned to go find who they could only assume was their new company commander.

* * *

Not even their first hot shower since arriving in Italy was enough to raise anyone's spirits in Barrea. Most of the men sat quietly, barely speaking to one another unless it was to snipe and bicker over nothing. Loki sat on his bunk in the basement of the house in which he'd been quartered, reorganising his pack for what felt like the two-hundredth time. This was not what he'd signed up for. He was no closer now to the Tesseract than he'd been when he decided to enlist. Why he'd thought enlisting was ever going to be a good idea, he had no idea. But then again, his plans always did have a certain lack of planning and foresight about them. He thought of polar bears and wondered if things would ever change.

He should have taken his chance and left. Let the humans declare him killed in action. What harm could it possibly do?

He laid Coulson's comics out on his bunk, lining them up neatly. Loki wasn't even sure why he'd taken them. But Coulson kept them as nice as he could out there, so Loki was determined to do the same. If Loki had any sense of honour at all, he'd burn them, but somehow he couldn't even bring himself to do that much. That would mean he'd have to admit that he'd once again made a friend in someone he shouldn't have done. Humans died. That's what they did, every time. There was no point in pretending he could keep them around for any length of time.

Loki didn't hear Randal come down the stairs until he was already looking down at the comics on the bed. Randal picked one up and shook his head.

"You hear that asshole's coming out here this week?" he asked, tossing the comic back down with the rest. "To 'boost morale.'"

"I don't think I'll be going," Loki said, putting the comics back into his pack. "Ray should — should have been here for that."

"Yeah. So should a lot of guys." Randal sat on his own bunk, not looking over at Loki.

"Yeah," Loki agreed quietly.

He fought the urge to throw something across the room. Instead, he hastily put everything into his pack and got up.

"I need to get my hair cut," he declared as he left the basement.

* * *

He spent most of his time in garrison in his bunk. It had been their first time in garrison since England, but few of the men seemed to be enjoying it. Barrea resembled an over-sized aid station, with many of the walking wounded keeping to themselves, rather than playing cards in the shade lent by a burnt-out house or sharing a cigarette in the sun. The medics called it shell shock, and used it as an excuse to send people off the line, or even back home.

No-one noticed one more soldier curled up in his bed all day.

The basement was quiet through much of the day, allowing Loki to concentrate. He was just a sergeant; given information only on a need-to-know basis. So if no-one thought he needed to know anything, Loki was just going to have to do his own reconnaissance.

He started with Colonel Phillips, following him around the camp. Hydra was the word of the week as Phillips discussed matters with other officers. They weren't just the scourge of second battalion, but of the entire regiment. Every coordinated attack against the 107th had been Hydra.

Loki left Phillips' side and followed General Thompson after that. Thompson dictated a message back to the States, warning that Hydra had defected from Hitler and Germany. They attacked not only American soldiers, but Italian, German, French, British… Hydra were bigger than anyone had realised.

One thing was certain. The longer Loki stayed where he was, the further from his reach the Tesseract grew. This Johan Schmidt and his army had harnessed the power of the gods. He was likely already unstoppable, even if the Allied Forces did know what they were truly up against.

After three days of giving himself a headache from the constant reaching with his magic, Loki decided he'd learned all there was the learn. He rolled over onto his bunk, trying to determine his next course of action. It wouldn't matter if he went AWOL. There was no Luke Olson to be punished, and Loki knew he was too good to get caught anyway. But after that… what? Wander about Europe until he got lucky? Unlikely. Europe was far too big for him to rely on luck. Loki had exhausted his supply of good luck as a screaming infant on Jötunheimr. Anything he did would have to depend on his wits.

He couldn't stay where he was at any rate. The regiment had ground to a halt, and staying with it simply wasn't an option. In two weeks, no-one would even miss him.

Thinking that perhaps a plan would come to him, Loki got up for the first time in days. It occurred to him as he left the dimly-lit basement and walked out into the rain-soaked street that there were few people about. Aside from the occasional officer, Barrea seemed completely empty. Loki wandered aimlessly, walking to the edge of town where Regiment HQ was set up. The south edge of town was the only part that hadn't been completely bombed out by Hydra the week before. The roads ran along large stretches of trees, broken up only by muddy fields. As Loki walked along the edge of one, nearing a small group of tents, he remembered the USO show Randal had mentioned. From the road, he could hear the jeers and shouts of unimpressed men. Suddenly, very curious, Loki made his way toward the field. By the time he got close enough to see what was happening, the main attraction had already been replaced by a line of young women in patriotic skirts. Everything about them seemed boring, so Loki wandered off behind the tents instead. He could hear shrill whistles and catcalls over the music, so whatever was happening onstage seemed a suitable distraction.

He wandered about the tents that had been set up, letting the officers continue their work while remaining close to everything, should there come another strike. Not the best place to mount a defence, but a safer place to congregate than ruined houses.

Loki heard the sounds of a slightly heated discussion with Colonel Phillips and moved closer to better eavesdrop. Phillips, ever his cheery self, was arguing the intelligence of going behind enemy lines to mount a rescue, when so few of the men left under his command were fit for combat.

Well, wasn't that just an idea?

Before Loki could talk himself out of it, Captain America himself strode out of the tent and right into Loki.

"I'm coming with you," Loki said at once, barely giving Rogers a chance to recover his footing.

Rogers looked at Loki with alarm, turning to the woman behind him.

"Er, I…" Rogers trailed off, unsure what to actually claim to have been getting ready to do.

"I have friends there too," Loki said easily. "You'll have better odds with help."

Rogers consulted wordlessly with Agent Carter and nodded. She spared a moment to look over Loki before nodding back. "Have you got a plan?" she asked.

"Uh." Rogers looked down at himself. "I think I want to change, first." He ducked back into one of the larger tents, leaving the other two standing in the mud.

Throwing a confused glance to Carter, Loki followed after Rogers. The tent was one the USO tour had set up, with costumes on racks and a sewing machine at quick access right near the entrance. Rogers had shucked the large, olive drab trench coat he'd been wearing, and was trading it for a pair of combat trousers.

"Have you been issued anything useful?" Loki asked as Rogers pilfered a blue helmet from a shelf. "Perhaps a gun?"

Rogers looked up at him, a frown playing over his face. "You wouldn't happen to know where a guy might find one, just lying around?" he asked.

Loki turned to look back out to where Carter stood, waiting for both of them. He didn't even have to really try to make himself look like he didn't want to talk about the words he was thinking.

"Plenty of guys were sent home. I'm sure you know that by now," he said bitterly. "Their stuff is all over the place, waiting to be picked over by replacements."

Rogers nodded. "Right," he said. He slid into a leather jacket and picked up his patriotic shield to match his patriotic tights. "Let's go, then."

Loki nodded in the direction of the town, casting a glance around to make sure they weren't being watched. Satisfied that they weren't he cloaked the three of them from spying eyes, just to be sure. A small convoy of jeeps and trucks were parked on the edge of the field, and without a word between them, they all climbed into the nearest jeep, Carter taking the wheel. Loki climbed into the back seat, leaning between the others as he pointed up the road.

"I'm in the church," he said. "It's almost all there."

With a nod, Carter dropped the jeep into gear and pulled out onto the road, taking it north into town. As they rumbled about the broken streets, Rogers glared out at everything around them. Despite his efforts to remain indifferent, Loki's mood matched Rogers', both with their jaws set tightly as they watched bombed-out and destroyed buildings roll past them.

Before Carter pulled to a complete stop outside the church, Loki leapt out of the back seat and slipped back down into the basement to retrieve his things. He slipped on his belt with his pistol and all his ammunition and grabbed his rifle, slinging it over his shoulder. For a moment, he contemplated bringing his pack. He didn't want to leave it, but taking it might look rather strange, he realised. Instead, he banished it to the secret chamber behind his bed in the palace. A moment later, he did the same to Coulson's pack. Picking up his helmet from his bunk, Loki turned round to go back upstairs to meet Rogers and Carter. Before he was half-way up the stairs, he turned back around and found Ramirez's bunk. Ramirez had been at the aid station for three days. If he came back at all, Loki would be surprised. As it was, he wouldn't be needing his weapons any time soon. Loki grabbed the rifle and pistol from under the bed and rushed up the stairs.

He found Carter and Rogers waiting anxiously and jumped into the back seat again. Before he was even settled, Carter got the jeep going again, turning round awkwardly on the narrow road.

"I'm not sure which you prefer, but I've more rounds for the pistol," Loki said. He passed Ramirez's weapons forward to Rogers, along with a few boxes of ammunition.

"It might be easier with the handgun," Rogers said almost at once.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Carter asked him.

"Making it up as I go along," Rogers admitted. He took several clips' worth of ammunition from Loki, loading the pistol at once. "I figure the hard part'll be just getting there."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Carter warned. "Hydra might have defected, but they took a bunch of soldiers with them. Something about the fortress being very guarded by the things.

Loki gave her a concerned look, telling himself that his apprehension was all part of his cover. Barrea fell from view, and Loki forced himself to relax, turning back to Rogers.

"I thought you'd be taller," Loki said, changing the subject to something less nerve-wracking.

Rogers turned to face Loki from the front seat. "What?" he asked.

"I read your comics," Loki clarified. "I thought you'd be taller."

"You're not exactly short yourself, pal," Rogers pointed out wryly.

Loki chuckled and looked out at the passing landscape. "Olson, by the way," he introduced.

"I know," said Rogers, turning around to face forward again. "We've met."

Loki looked back toward the man in front of him, certain he'd remember that meeting. "Have we?" he asked.

Rogers nodded. "Yeah. A while ago. I was, uh… You probably just don't recognise me. I used to be a lot shorter."

Loki frowned as he tried to work out that puzzle. Rogers suddenly had an advantage over him, and while it was a small one, it still irritated Loki immensely. So far, the only thing this damned war had done was put Loki into a series of compromising and under-powered positions.

"Do I at least get a hint?" he asked waspishly.

Rogers flicked a quick glance backwards at him and grinned wryly. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," he said.

"Or close up the wall with our English dead," Loki finished automatically.

As Loki stared at him, Rogers turned his gaze to Carter as she drove. There was something about his profile that Loki did find vaguely familiar. Something… art student-ish.

"Oh," he said finally.

"Oh, you do remember?" asked Rogers, more playful than anything.

"I have a twin brother," Loki said quickly. "He can be a real jackass sometimes. Ignores people if he thinks there might be a good screw in his immediate future."

Rogers laughed openly and looked to Carter once more. "So, where are we going, anyway?" he asked.

The jeep almost failed to take another sharp bend at speed, but Carter wrestled it back under control. "We have a temporary airstrip outside Alfedena," she told him. "If you want into Austria, you're going to need an aeroplane."

"Austria?" Loki asked, pretending to be surprised. He even might have been, if not for all the time he'd spent spying on Colonel Phillips.

Rogers turned round in his seat to face Loki again. "Are you sure you want to do this?" he asked.

Loki nodded and looked out at the sloping fields as they sped down the mountain. "Someone has to, right?" It was the sort of thing he'd read in a dozen Captain America comics. He was certain Rogers would appreciate the sentiment.

Rogers nodded back and resettled in his seat, watching as his first proper glimpse of Italy faded into evening. He thought perhaps when the war was over, he might visit Europe as a tourist, rather than as an attraction. Despite what he'd been promised, he'd hardly seen any of Europe or Africa, stopping only long enough to stand on stage and get heckled by tired soldiers.

"So, we have a plane. What about a pilot?" he asked suddenly.

Carter didn't take her eyes off the road as she took another sharp corner. "I think I know just the man," she said.

"You?" Loki asked, unable to help himself. He leaned against the back of the seat in front of him, grinning smugly.

"I'm not a man, in case you haven't noticed, Sergeant," Carter pointed out evenly. She flicked the briefest of glances over her shoulder at Loki. "Although, I'm not sure the same could be said about you."

Rogers let out a little huff of laughter, and without quite knowing why, Loki scowled and crossed his arms over his chest as he slouched down in his seat. The military jeep was big enough for the job it had been designed for, but the back seat wasn't quite big enough for Loki, putting his knees dangerously close to his face. As they bounced and rumbled along the loose road, Loki watched Rogers in front of him. He seemed to not quite know how to interact with Agent Carter at all. It rather put Loki back in New York, where most of the men he knew seemed to behave exactly the same way.

Alfedena was only about eight miles south-east of Barrea, and had been just as heavily-hit by Hydra's assaults. They came to a long, flat stretch of road which doubled as a runway, and had remained largely undamaged in the attacks. Seeing it, Loki wondered if he should be thanking some wayward god of open supply lines, and to which pantheon this unknown saviour might belong.

Carter pulled off and parked on the sloped edge. Here, several small cargo and transport aeroplanes were grounded, but one modified Lockheed Lodestar stood out from the rest. It wasn't painted olive-drab like everything else the US military owned, but glinted under the setting sun with its polished steel finish. Someone sat in the open hatch, his feet dangling out over the road as he fiddled with a small electronic device. Rogers grinned widely at the sight of Howard Stark and quickly jumped out of the jeep to meet him. Stark looked up at them, taking a moment to fully realise the identity of his visitors.

"Peggy. Steve," he greeted, surprised to see them. He looked at Rogers as the group approached and smirked. "Or should I say Captain? Who's your friend?"

Rogers glanced over at Loki. "This is Sergeant Olson," he said. "He's helping me out with something."

Stark looked up from his tinkering project, focusing between Rogers and Loki a few times before turning his gaze to Agent Carter. "As am I, I presume?" he asked.

Rogers nodded and looked up at Stark's plane. "Word on the street is you can get us into Austria."

Stark's eyebrows rose as he forgot all about the device in his hands. Once more, he turned his focus to Carter, who said nothing to contradict Rogers' words.

"Word on the street sure does make a lot of claims," Stark said.

Rogers hid his disappointment, but not well enough. Even Loki was annoyed, now being eight miles further from where he needed to be.

"So, that's a no, then?" Loki asked.

"I never said that, my friend," Stark said. He waved his screwdriver at Loki and clicked his tongue a few times. He tapped his screwdriver against his mouth and looking at the sky. Loki looked between him and Rogers, wondering how many dead-ends it was possible for one person to stumble upon.

"Tell me," Stark said finally. "What's in Austria that concerns us, other than Hitler and all his best friends?"

"An estimated half-a-regiment's worth of POWs, whom Colonel Phillips have deemed not worth mounting a rescue," Loki answered.

Stark looked pointedly down the fuselage of his aeroplane. Loki hadn't much experience with the contraptions, but he could very plainly see that it was not big enough to transport over two-thousand men.

"And I assume there's more to this plan that you just haven't mentioned yet?" Stark asked.

Rogers nodded. "We only need you to get us into Austria," he said. "We'll worry about getting ourselves out."

Both Loki and Carter shot their attention to him then, neither quite sure of the madness of his plan.

"Steve, you can't," Carter insisted.

"If they can get out of Austria, then we can get out," Rogers assured. "And it won't be just us getting out."

"No," Carter agreed. "You and hundreds of men who need medical attention."

Rogers' expression turned stony. "You were willing to help half-an-hour ago," he pointed out.

"And I still am," Carter said. "But what you're proposing is—"

"The last thing anyone would expect," Loki said suddenly. He smirked as he thought about it, finding himself rather impressed with the whole thing. "If they're not expecting it, then they've not planned against it. Do we have a contingency plan for two insurgents appearing from nowhere?"

Stark looked to Carter again, his expression suddenly brighter. "Give me ten minutes," he said.

He set aside his tinkering and jumped out of the plane, trotting back to the tents set up along the road as a makeshift airbase. As he disappeared into one of them, Carter pleaded wordlessly with Rogers and Loki before rushing after Stark instead. Once she was out of earshot, Rogers turned to Loki.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Rogers asked once more. It almost made Loki want to hit him, despite wondering the same thing himself.

"Ask me once more and I will not be held responsible for my actions," he said instead.

"All right. Point taken," Rogers said. He began to walk alongside Stark's aeroplane, pausing to look up at the painted tail fin, bearing Stark's name and company logo.

"So what's his name?" Rogers asked.

Loki frowned, looking up at the tail-fin as well. "I thought you knew him," he said.

Rogers quickly flashed from confusion to understanding. "Oh. Howard. Yeah, he's a civilian contractor. A genius, apparently," he said. "I, uh. I meant your friend. The reason you're so hell-bent on getting over there."

"Oh," said Loki. He looked away, suddenly finding the seams on the plane's fuselage extremely interesting. "Coulson. Ray. Well, actually, my whole squad almost. Assuming they weren't all killed."

Now it was Rogers' turn to look away. He wasn't a soldier — not a proper one — and Loki knew that he had no idea what they were about to face. Rogers was a propaganda figure; something to get young kids back in the States all gung-ho about the war effort, and a morale boost to the men stuck in foxholes and mosquito-infested jungles. At the moment, it wasn't exactly working. Loki had seen the jeering men at Barrea, and suddenly wasn't too keen on following him into battle. Rogers may have outranked him, but Loki had far more experience. He looked at his hands. As long as Rogers knew when to follow, they might just not die.

"What happened?" Rogers asked, interrupting Loki's admittedly gloomy jokes.

"With us?" asked Loki. He wasn't even sure, really. "We were holding the line at Barrea. First they shelled us all to Hel, and then attacked on foot while we were still recovering. They were coordinated attacks. All over Europe."

Loki leaned against the fuselage of the plane and looked out over the field as night fell upon it. "Not just us. It's a rogue group. They're called Hydra. They've defected from German control and have declared war against everyone."

Rogers started to nod, but turned a suspicious eye to Loki instead.

"They do much gossiping out here?" he asked.

Loki grinned drily. "Not really," he said. "I'm just very good at catching conversations I'm not meant to hear."

Rogers regarded him suspiciously for a few seconds more before looking away again. Loki was already certain his cover was starting to slip, but he couldn't really bring himself to care. He knew where the Tesseract was now, and was only a short while from having it. He could take the Tesseract and disappear and the humans would be none the wiser. And if he was lucky, Rogers would be too busy freeing prisoners of war to notice Loki slipping away. Or, at the very least, he'd be too busy getting killed to notice.

Stark and Carter returned to the road, each carrying a large pack, and Stark with a small radio-like device in one hand. Without a word to anyone, Stark took both items into the plane and began readying the craft for take-off. Rogers nudged Loki on the arm and nodded toward the hatch.

"Now or never," he said before climbing in after Stark.

Loki took the pack from Carter and offered his hand to help her up into the plane, but she refused it and climbed in herself. He could get to like her, he thought. Perhaps if he made it back, he could find out.


	5. Heil Hydra

**AN:**

I apologise for the huge delay on this chapter. I've been quiet, but not entirely unproductive. A large reason for the delay stems from working on something which has now gone into serial publication (details in the end notes, for the curious). Chapter notes: Percival Pinkerton would have statistically been middle class, but for ease of readership, shan't be using much slang, rhyming or otherwise. Except for instances in which I simply could not resist. Also, I know the geography is knackered. It's terrible, but it's also terrible in the movie.

* * *

They were five miles off the drop zone when the shelling started — anti-aircraft artillery that exploded mid-air, sending shockwaves through the sky. That was the moment, with the heavy pack strapped to his back and the aeroplane lurching violently, when Loki realised the full scope of his situation. As Stark struggled to keep the plane level, Rogers pushed open the hatch and leaned out over the edge. Seeing him standing there, making his decision to leap from the craft into the mayhem outside made Loki realise that he had not thought anything through. Again.

"I feel like I should take this moment to confess that I'm not jump qualified," he shouted over the wind and explosions.

Rogers cast a strange, almost amused glance back at him. "That makes two of us!" he shouted back.

He pulled his goggles down over his eyes and disappeared out the hatch. Steve Rogers was absolutely mad, but Loki hadn't the time to appreciate it. He hadn't time to do anything at all. The longer he hesitated, the more distance he put between the two of them once on the ground. He screwed shut his eyes and stepped from the plane, fighting everything in him that told him this was wrong. Wind tore at him from every direction, dizzying and disorientating him until he wasn't even certain which way was up. He wanted to scream and swear and everything else at the entirely unnatural experience, but he was fighting hard enough to get hair into his lungs without complicating matters further.

When Loki finally opened his eyes again, he almost wished he hadn't. Everything around him was exploding, lighting the ground below him in lightning-quick flashes, each burst of light bringing him closer and closer to the ground. In the chaos, he could just make out the olive-drab silk of Rogers' parachute below. The sight of it made him realise that he needed to deploy his own, and very soon. He blindly fumbled with the straps and tabs, completely unable to tell which would deploy the parachute and which would release the entire harness. As he struggled, he deliberately ignored the forest canopy as it rushed toward him, a very present reminder of the stupidity of his entire plan. He quickly gave up on the parachute and instead dropped his rifle to at least spare himself the indignity of breaking his jaw on it, or worse, when he landed.

It only occurred to him then to pursue other options, but by then it was too late. Before he could even centre his energies and draw the seiðr, he crashed through the trees. The forest wasn't as thick as it looked from the air, and very little stood in the way to break his fall. The few branches he did strike on his way down caught on his coat and broke, falling to the ground with him. The impact rattled every bone in his body, and he was truly certain his insides had all turned to jelly. He tried to force air back into his lungs, only to choke on his own tongue. Lying on the forest floor, he could only stare up at the still-exploding sky, wondering how much Heimdall had seen, and if he had, what he might have to say about it later. It may have even been enough to finally make the old gatekeeper break a smile.

Finally, Loki remembered how to breathe and tried to roll over onto his side. Every nerve in his body fought against him as he coughed into the dust, but he didn't dare stop. He had to get back to his feet and get moving. He focused on that, not letting his thoughts wander to what might happen if he were discovered lying in the dust with his parachute still packed.

"Fuck," he coughed, pushing himself upright. "Ymir's tits, never again."

He focused on muttering and cursing to himself as a distraction from everything else as he made his way back to his feet. He stumbled, swaying dangerously to one side, only to over-balance and nearly fall on his face. He had to get the parachute off, and after far too much time fiddling with buckles and straps, he did what he should have done in the first place and magicked it off. As it fell to the ground, it cut through him with a familiar icy chill that was distinct from his inherent Jötun magic.

Standing alone in a strange wood, Loki considered just giving it all up and going home with his tail between his legs. But it was a fleeting consideration. He heard someone moving in the distance, giving him not the time nor opportunity to tally his personal failures. He vanished the parachute to one of his secret vaults and straightened his glasses, doing his best to look like he hadn't just fallen out of the sky in entirely the wrong way. He searched frantically for his gun, finally finding it hanging by its strap from a low branch. He didn't even bother trying to reach for it, instead calling it to him with an annoyed wave of his hand. No sooner had he readied it, he spied Rogers in the distance, creeping forward through the dark.

"Over here," said Loki quietly.

Rogers froze in his place and looked around. "Olson?" he asked. He was quiet, but not quiet enough. Like a replacement, Loki thought almost bitterly. He quickly put that thought out of his mind and moved closer to Rogers.

"Yeah," he said. He held back another round of coughing and choking, ignoring the tightness in his chest, repositioning his rifle like moving wasn't complete agony. He was determined to at least pretend to have done things properly.

Rogers approached quickly, lowering his gun and slinging his shield over his shoulder. "You had me scared, there," he said, looking around cautiously. "I didn't see a 'chute."

"No, I'm fine," said Loki, aiming for cavalier and missing by leagues. "It's in a tree. I had to cut myself out." He waved vaguely upward, eager to get moving again. The Tesseract was still out there, waiting for him, and all he had to do was take it.

He forced back another fit of coughing, but Rogers didn't notice. He was too busy looking up at the trees. If there was any truth to the Lehigh rumours, Rogers was the proof; Loki was certain. He'd read every comic and clipping Coulson's mother had sent, and none of it added up properly. Standing with the man himself in a dark Austrian wood, Loki severely hoped that whatever had been done at Lehigh, it hadn't given Rogers any super-human vision. Otherwise, he'd notice a lack of parachutes in trees and a suspiciously Olson-sized depression in the ground.

"We'd better get going," said Rogers finally. "We're short of the drop zone and we got a lot of ground to cover."

Loki motioned for Rogers to lead the way, if only because chain of command required him to. He strongly suspected Rogers had never led a field manoeuvre in his life, and even his rank was dubious at best. Unless West Point were offering special crash-courses for propaganda figures.

Somehow, Loki doubted it.

Rogers looked up and pulled a small compass from his belt, taking only a few moments to orientate himself and set out. He'd picked more or less the right direction — the Tesseract was so close, Loki could feel it. But its song was different now; twisted and distorted. He could have gone straight to it, but he knew he'd never leave alive if he tried that again. He needed Rogers for a human shield, if nothing else. And since Rogers had the compass and the rank, Loki had to play his assigned role and follow his command.

"You went to Lehigh, didn't you?" Loki asked as they crept through the trees. No-one would hear them because Loki didn't want them to, but he whispered all the same.

"Yeah," repeated Rogers after a hesitant moment. "Yeah, I did."

"You moved up pretty quickly. When did you finish?" asked Loki. The baiting was obvious, but he was too curious to care.

"Well..." Rogers stopped suddenly and held his hand out in a signal for Loki to do the same.

Hand signals were covered during Loki's fourth week of basic training, and Rogers got it wrong. Loki said nothing though, and looked to where Rogers was pointing.

"It should be just over there somewhere," said Rogers.

Loki liked the sound of 'should.' His own vision was muted and muddy in his human form, but Rogers didn't seem to have much of an advantage over him in this area, if any at all. All Loki needed was to maintain his cover long enough to get to the Tesseract, and then it wouldn't matter. Nothing was going to keep it from him finding it. Not Rogers. Not the whole of Hydra. And now, for the first time in months, it was within his grasp. His entire mood changed suddenly at the thought, and lifting his rifle, he fell back into position alongside his new captain.

Loki wasn't exactly sure where they were, but Rogers seemed somehow passingly familiar with the area. Even if he did consistently get the hand signals wrong, Rogers managed to lead the way through the trees in an almost arrow-straight path, pausing only every so often to make sure the way was clear.

If this man ever finished basic training, he'd forgotten everything during whatever experiments he'd gone through. Though somehow, Loki doubted that was the case. Rogers was yet another cuckoo in the army's nest, and Loki could almost respect that.

They eventually came to a narrow dirt road, down either direction of which were lights. While the lights to the east were flood and spotlights, those to the west were drawing nearer at a steady pace. Rogers' hand signals seemed to be made up on the spot, but Loki got the gist and nodded all the same. Staying at the edge of the road, they waited for the first Opel Blitz to pass and ran after the second. Rogers climbed into the back first, offering assistance to Loki. Jumping onto the rear bumper, Loki passed up his rifle to free his hands and climbed into the truck, pulling the canopy flaps down again. As they both turned to get settled, they saw two Hydra soldiers, stunned-looking despite their masks, look from one another and back to Rogers and Loki.

"Fellas," Rogers greeted dryly.

It was enough to snap them from their shock, but before the Hydra soldiers were even properly on their feet, Loki and Rogers charged them. Rogers smacked the first in the jaw with his shield at the same moment Loki head-butted the other. Both Hydra soldiers collapsed at once. After a wordless moment, Loki and Rogers both reached the same conclusion and reached to pick up the soldier nearest to the back of the truck and threw him out of it, followed immediately by the second.

"That was easy," Rogers said, not even winded.

Loki snorted. "They were just grunts," he pointed out.

Rogers nodded, understanding the implication. The two of them settled down where they could amongst the sealed crates, struggling with the difficult task of taking up as little space as possible.

"How long have you been out here?" asked Rogers after a tense silence. "You seem to know what you're doing."

Loki flicked at his rifle strap out of his way. "We arrived in England in June," he said. "We were shipped off right out of basic and thrown right into this hel-hole."

Rogers looked down at Loki's shoulder. "And you're already a sergeant? Not exactly taking your time either."

"Battlefield commission," Loki explained. "That is what tends to happen when out of an entire platoon, only eight men are still breathing at the end of the day. They don't usually take no for an answer, either."

"Seriously?" asked Rogers.

Loki wasn't sure which part Rogers doubted, so he shrugged in lieu of a response, almost indifferently. He very nearly made a quip about forced promotions, but his heart wasn't in it. He told himself he didn't care about any of it anyway, as he'd told himself countless times before. He was almost done with what he'd come to Europe to do, and then he could go home and forget about all of it.

"When we get back, we'll probably be court-martialed," he said instead. "Assuming Phillips doesn't simply stand us up against a wall and have us shot."

"You don't really think that," said Rogers incredulously. "This is a rescue mission."

"Unsanctioned," Loki pointed out. "At the very least, I'll lose my rank. If someone's feeling generous. You, they'll probably throw back into the chorus line, though. I imagine it might look rather bad if Captain America is shot for treason."

Rogers looked at him with a hard frown. "It's a rescue mission," he repeated. "It won't come to that."

Loki shrugged. "I do hope you're right."

The truck slowed suddenly, and Loki and Rogers both scrambled for whatever cover they could manage. But rather than stopping for an inspection, the truck was waved through the guard post and continued on its way through the camp.

"We should split up once we're in there," Rogers said as the truck rounded a sharp corner and stopped.

"Split up?" Loki could hardly believe his good luck. He almost wondered if the Norns were toying with him, but he didn't dare say anything further lest he jinx himself.

The truck started backing up, and from outside they could hear men barking orders and moving stuff about.

"We'll cover more ground that way," said Rogers quietly. He moved to the back of the truck and held his shield up in front of him, as though expecting a blow.

"Rendezvous at the main road. We won't have much time once they realise we're here."

Loki nodded. He didn't want to come off as too eager, but Rogers' plan was perfect. With Rogers acting as a decoy, Loki could almost sneak around the camp and find the Tesseract without having to use magic at all. With magic, he'd be home in twenty minutes at the absolute most. He itched to rush off, he could practically smell what he had come for, and it was frustrating to be stuck with this plodding meathead of a human.

"Yes, sir," he said with only the smallest amount of irony. He could feel the Tesseract's call vibrating through him as he waited for his chance to rush in and take it. He thought he might start vibrating from the effort of keeping still.

The canopy flap was pulled back by someone who had just enough time to realise that he was looking at a shield painted like the American flag, before he was struck in the face with it and knocked unconscious.

"That thing certainly does come in handy," Loki mused, peering over Rogers' shoulder at the unconscious Hydra soldier.

"Tell me about it," said Rogers, just as surprised at its effectiveness.

Rogers quickly checked the area and jumped out of the truck and onto the loading dock, holding the canopy open for Loki. There was no-one nearby to see them, but that wouldn't last long and they both knew it.

"Take the north side of the camp. I'll take the south," Rogers instructed, pointing where he wanted Loki to go. "Soon as you find what we're here for, get them and get the hell out."

Loki nodded and rushed out of the truck before anyone could wander over and find them. As soon as he was out of sight from Rogers, Loki cloaked himself. As he ran down the edge of the wide corridor, he glanced around, searching for his bearings. The Tesseract was so close now, Loki almost thought he could reach out and touch it. Its song, loud and insistent, called out to him with what might have been lust. And Loki lusted after it in turn. He would find it if it killed him. What came after wouldn't matter, because with the Tesseract Loki could do anything he wanted.

The Hydra camp he sprinted through wasn't a camp so much as it was a towering steel and concrete compound, with long, winding corridors that didn't who where Loki expected them to. It almost reminded him of Asgard in that way; nothing went in a straight line, requiring several detours to reach the final destination. After finding one dead-end after another, using only the Tesseract's song as a beacon, Loki began finding it difficult to not simply teleport instead. It would solve so many problems. But there was still a part of his mind that knew to exercise caution; a small voice that insisted he give up the Tesseract and let the humans do as they pleased. He knew from painful experience what would happen if he just swept in to take the Tesseract right from their hands. But none of it was enough to stop him wanting it. Giving up on yet another wrong corridor, Loki slunk through a large double-door, casting just enough magic to keep anyone from noticing him enter. Like all the others before him, it did not lead him to the Tesseract. Instead, he found himself in a large, dark room with cages lining both sides. More surprising than the cages was the contents: people. Soldiers from not just his regiment, but everywhere. Even from where he stood, he could see uniforms from half a dozen nations or more. Good to see there were some areas the Nazis didn't discriminate in.

While his regiment had only been attacked little more than a week before, some of these men had clearly been held captive for far longer. Some lay against the bars of the cages, barely moving at all. For a moment, he thought some of them dead. If they were, those around them were so exhausted and demoralised to notice or care. Many of those in the cages were from his company; men he went through training with. Men who survived Badolato and the assaults on Potenza and Caserta. It was dank, oppressive, and it stank like nothing on or off Midgard. Loki covered his nose, and then stopped.

For the first time since laying eyes on Captain Rogers that afternoon, Loki's thoughts wandered from the Tesseract. There were suddenly more pressing matters at hand.

Loki started to make his way down the centre of the corridor between the cages, inspecting them and their inhabitants. The locks would have been easy to deal with, but there was no way to explain breaking through all of them without keys. He moved over to the far side of the room, searching for anything that might have helped. Suddenly, above a nearby cage, a guard fell over.

"Who the hell are you?" one of the trapped soldiers asked, looking at the scene above him.

"I… I'm Captain America," Rogers answered, hesitant at first, but then with something that almost sounded like authority.

Loki grinned widely despite himself and rushed over, drawing no small amount of surprised chatter at his sudden appearance.

"I thought I told you to take the north," Rogers said with a grin in his voice. He passed the keys down to the grate and got back to his feet.

Loki wasted no time in unlocking the door to the nearest cage. "I got lost," he said. "But look what I found."

Above him, he could see Rogers roll his eyes.

"Olson?"

Loki whirled around to see Coulson amongst the men in the cage, and surprised himself by grinning even wider than before.

"I heard there was a party," he said, unlocking the next cage as quickly as he could. He handed the keys off to a corporal and stepped aside to let those trapped inside file out, but otherwise paid them little mind. "I can't believe you didn't invite me."

"Yeah, we had cake and everything," Coulson said dryly. He looked around at the growing crowd as the keys made their way from one cage to the next, creating that much more chaos with each time they passed hands.

"Hey, was that really…" Coulson started, uncertain, as he pointed to the spot where Rogers had been.

Just then, Rogers appeared on their level, standing up on his toes to get a better look at the crowd.

"I'm looking for Sergeant James Barnes," he called out loudly.

"Barnes?" asked Loki. He looked to Coulson. "There's a Barnes in first platoon, isn't there? The one we, er. The one from Badolato."

Coulson's face went grim. "Yeah, him," he said. "They took him to medical this morning. You don't come back from medical."

Loki intended to question him further, but was stopped by a sudden klaxon ringing out through the camp. Almost at the same instant, Loki could feel the Tesseract being choked silent. It ripped violently at him, as if making a final plea, and then he felt nothing, leaving Loki feeling almost hollow. The space where the Tesseract had been was replaced by silence, as if it had never been there at all.

"Damnit," he cursed aloud.

"Time's up," Rogers said. "Get everyone to the rendezvous. Quick."

Loki started to direct everyone toward the door, but turned suddenly to Rogers. "What about you?" he asked.

"I'll catch up."

Rogers ran back the way he'd come, disappearing behind a door before Loki could even begin to protest. Looking at the escalating mayhem as newly-liberated prisoners of war scrambled aimlessly, he realised he hadn't the time for anything else anyway. On their own, the POWs might have caused enough trouble to escape, but without leadership, they were scrambling in all directions with no central plan. Out of more contempt and frustration than anything else, Loki stuck his fingers between his teeth and let out a shrill whistle that — with a small amount of help — cut over everything else.

"All right," he shouted as everyone began to take pause. "If you want to get out of here alive, you're going to listen to me and do as I say!"

He handed his rifle over to Coulson and unholstered his sidearm. "There are only two weapons between us, but there's an armoury not far from here," he said. "Coulson and I will lead a raid. We'll go in waves. Take what you need and get out to assist the rest."

He began to make his way back toward the door, spotting a familiar blond moustache in his way.

"You," he said, pointing. "Make sure everyone gets out. Lead a team to try and round up anyone who got separated. Rendezvous at the front gate."

"Yes, sir," Corporal Dugan said, tipping his unregulation bowler hat.

As Loki and Coulson ran to the front, Dugan turned round to sweep the room.

"Who the hell was that?" someone nearby asked incredulously.

Dugan started to answer, but stopped short when he turned to see a Japanese man addressing him.

"What, are we taking everybody?" Dugan asked with a sneer.

Jim Morita was less than impressed with the question. "I'm from Fresno, ace," he said, holding up his dog tag for emphasis.

"I'm with the Jap on this, actually," said a soldier in a Canadian uniform.

Mortia sneered at him as he replaced his dog tags under his shirt.

Private Howlett hitched a thumb in Morita's direction as he checked behind the row of cages for anything useful. "Do you know that guy? Who was he?"

Dugan snorted as he found the stairs leading to the level above. "Fucking crazy, that's who," he said. He ran to the still-unconscious guard and liberated his sidearm and a few magazines he was able to find.

"First week of basic, he knocked out his drill sergeant and got promoted for it," Dugan explained.

"That was him?" Morita asked. "I heard he fractured the guy's skull."

Dugan rejoined the other two and waved them to follow him back to the thinning crowd at the front.

"Yeah, that's nothing," he said. "When we were in Badolato, he ran straight through heavy fire to deliver a message to first platoon, and then came back. And then did it all over again. Apparently without ever firing his weapon."

Howlett nodded concedingly. "Yeah, all right," he said. "Even if that's only half-true, he's got my support."

"Don't got much of a choice, pal," Dugan reminded him.

He led the other two out the door, in the opposite direction of the rest of the crowd. Already, they could hear the tell-tale scuffling of a struggle and followed after it. They came upon a pair of men fighting off three Hydra guards, barely holding their own. Without a word between them, the trip rushed in to assist. Howlett was smaller than any of the guards, but he used it to his advantage. He struck low, body-slamming one of the Hydra guards and tackling him to the ground. With Howlett on top of him, the guard swung an awkward punch and landed it on Howlett's jaw. Howlett hardly seemed to notice. Before the guard had a chance to try again, Howlett punched him back, unrelentingly, until the guard stopped moving.

Beside him, Dugan grappled with the larger of the three guards, fighting for the Luger he'd stolen only minutes before.

"His belt!" Morita called, helping a fellow George company soldier incapacitate the third guard.

Dugan dared a glance to the guard's belt, and with a pleased sense of vengeful irony, he snatched the guard's truncheon from its place. With a wide swing, he smashed it against the side of the guard's head, reclaiming the Luger as the guard fell to the floor.

"Told ya, Fritz," he panted.

Their number was now five, and after ransacking the guards, four of them were in one way or another armed. In under ten minutes, they charged their way through the camp, their group tripling in size, before coming to the front courtyard. What they found there was pure anarchy. Fire blazed in the night, and over the still-wailing klaxon, shouts and explosions roared out. Occasionally, a flash of blue would light everything up against the orange glow that had settled over the camp, highlighting the area like a bolt of otherworldly lightning.

"Well, don't let me stop you," Dugan said.

It was all the encouragement any of them needed. Most of them rushed out to the melee, eager to return the hell that had been paid unto them. Except for Dugan and Jones, who both rushed for an ignored Panzer. They took it with relative ease, finding no-one inside, and soon others began getting similar ideas. Before long, every tank, truck, and armoured vehicle in the area were hijacked. By the time the front gates were blown apart, those few remaining Hydra soldiers beat a hasty retreat, clewing the way for an easy escape.

* * *

Loki rode at the front of the convoy in a battered Kübelwagen. He stood precariously, balancing on the seat with one knee, with his rifle aimed over the top of the windscreen. Behind him, Howlett had one of Hydra's Tesseract-powered weapons aimed over the side, ready for trouble. Though everyone was exhausted, no-one dared sleep. They were deep behind enemy lines, and even at full speed, reaching Allied territory before dawn would be impossible. The slower half-tracks and tanks were quickly abandoned in favour of the smaller but faster Opels and Volkswagens.

"This is starting to bug me," Howlett said, breaking the long and dreary silence. "We go through hell to get to Austria, and no-one's even here."

Coulson looked away from the road just long enough to send Loki a worried glance. Loki knew Howlett was right, though. There was something deeply wrong about retreating through abandoned territory.

"I think this is Italy, but I agree," Loki said over his shoulder. "Just keep your eyes open. The Italians are probably—"

He stopped short, staring blankly ahead. Howlett shot his attention to where he thought Loki was looking, but he saw nothing worth being alarmed over.

"What?" he asked impatiently.

"They're not even here," Loki said. "This was all effectively under Nazi control, via Hydra. Who defected and attacked every Nazi base the same night they attacked us."

"Seriously?" Coulson asked.

"I overheard Phillips talking about it," Loki said.

"So what are you saying?" Howlett asked.

Loki climbed over the seat and joined Howlett in the back. "Watch the rear," he instructed.

He settled his rifle over the opposite side. All there was to see behind them was a long row of bucket cars and two-and-a-half-tonne trucks. In the dark, Loki could see antsy soldiers copying his actions, repositioning themselves one by one as information spread down the line.

"So what's your name, anyway?" Howlett asked after a tense moment. "I think I heard just about everything but."

"Olson," answered Loki. "And don't believe a word of it. It's all a pack of lies."

"They talking about that grenade you caught with your face again?" Coulson teased over his shoulder.

"No, just the guy he killed in basic," Howlett said. "But I want to hear about the grenade now."

Loki rolled his eyes and just barely resisted the urge to sigh. "I didn't kill him. He got right back up. He's fine."

"Even if you did knock Wednesday right out of his vocabulary," Coulson said.

Loki only didn't bury his face in his hands because he was too busy trying to hold onto his rifle and not fall over as they sped down the uneven road.

"But you should have seen it," Coulson continued, undaunted. "We were taking this charming Roman village that was completely indistinguishable from all the other charming Roman villages, and Luke kicked in this door like a goddamn mule. Only, on the other side, there was this guy getting ready to throw a grenade at us."

Loki rolled his eyes again and pretended not to hear a word of it.

"And he threw it all right," said Coulson. "Hit our friend here right between the eyes. That thing exploded, and this bastard walked away without so much as a scratch on that pretty face of his." Coulson laughed and shook his head. "I swear to god, he just flinched and charged in like nothing ever happened."

"It hit my chest and bounced back into the room," Loki corrected, incorrectly.

"I like his version better," Howlett said, nodding vaguely in Coulson's direction.

Loki looked over his shoulder just in time to catch Howlett studying him, before Howlett turned to face the rear again.

"You should stop denying it," Howlett said after a moment. "You're what? Eighteen and already a sergeant. Let people believe whatever the hell they want. It'll be good for your command presence."

"I don't have command presence. I don't even command; I'm just a sergeant," Loki said, growing irritable. He never even asked to be that much, and his plan to blend in was clearly not going as well as he'd hoped it would.

"How many guys you think got out of there tonight, kid?" Howlett asked. "Captain Star-Spangled Banner put that on you. And look." He pointed at the line of vehicles behind them.

"I don't know how many guys didn't make it out of there alive, but what do you think that number would have looked like if everybody just went out on their own?" asked Howlett.

"And I'm certain that had Captain Rogers gone in without my assistance, things would have worked out just fine." Loki resettled himself against the edge of the car, looking out at the darkness along the road. Italy was, as far as he could tell, entirely abandoned.

"Yeah, well. We don't know that, do we?" asked Howlett.

Loki very pointedly said nothing. He wasn't even supposed to be there; this wasn't his war and he should have had no part in it. Even his hunt for the Tesseract seemed like a foolish endeavour.

"Look," Howlett said, not getting the hint. "I understand that he's some sort of Big American Hero, but we don't exactly have Captain Canada." He turned to face Loki properly, leaning against the back of the seat. "You got command presence. Trust me. Try using it sometime. You might surprise yourself."

"I'm just a sergeant," Loki repeated. He didn't know how he'd come to be respected as a soldier in someone else's army when he couldn't even manage half the amount of respect as a prince of his own realm. A quiet voice in his head told him it was because the humans didn't yet know what he was. But they'd find out and turn on him, just like everyone else. It was just a matter of time.

He turned his back to Howlett completely, watching for anything in the dark. Behind him, he could hear Howlett shifting to get back into position as well.

"So, uh," Coulson said. "Where was Canada at before the Nazis attacked and you wound up out here in butt-fuck nowhere, Austria?"

* * *

As Dawn broke, they came to a small village by a lake. The village showed signs of armament, but whoever was camped there had left in a hurry. Probably just around the time the bombs started falling.

"Stop here," Loki said, pointing at the market square up ahead.

Howlett turned to signal to the car behind them to do the same. With guns aimed at every dark shadow, it was slowly becoming clear that the town was well and truly abandoned.

"What's the plan?" Coulson asked. He stood up as best he could with the steering wheel in his way and leaned over the windscreen.

Loki cautiously peered up at a high window. "We won't make it back without some reshuffling," he said. He hopped out of the car and walked back to the one behind, which carried only two men. They were both privates, but in all the confusion of the prison-break, he hadn't a clue who anyone was or where those he did know had ended up.

"We need to consolidate," he told the driver.

"I was just thinking the same thing," said Pinkerton, a soldier in Britain's Royal Army. "If we pack 'em in like sardines, we can probably fit everyone into five of those Opels; syphon off the petrol from the rest and divvy it up."

Loki nodded, having been thinking along those same lines. "Do it," he told Pinkerton. "Aim for four. I'll send a team to scavenge for supplies. Anyone not moving supplies, I want pointing guns at every shadow they can find."

Pinkerton left his gunman in the front seat and began spreading the orders down the line as Loki returned to Coulson and Howlett.

"You, stay where you are," he told Howlett. "Eyes on those windows at all times. If it moves, I want it dead."

"You got it, pal," Howlett said, readying his weapon again.

Loki nodded away from the car. "Ray, come with me."

Coulson stepped out onto the loose gravel, taking Loki's rifle once again as it was offered to him. As Loki scanned the crowd for someone else to take with him, Rogers and Dugan jogged up from the back of the line. Loki hadn't even been sure if either had made it out alive, but now that he knew for certain, Rogers' presence was a game-changer.

"Have you contacted Stark?" Loki asked, more eagerly than he'd meant to.

Rogers cringed. "No, there's a… slight problem with the radio." Rather than go into detail about it, he pulled the device from his belt and ruefully turned it over, showing mangled wires poking through the shredded case.

"So, we keep driving through enemy territory and hope no-one spots us?" Dugan asked.

Loki and Rogers shared a brief glance, but it was clear that neither of them had a better idea.

"That's the plan," Loki said reluctantly.

"We'll need supplies," Rogers said, looking over at the row of vehicles as everyone worked to reshuffle and trim down to as small of a convoy as possible.

"Jerry cans, guns, ammo, rations. Anything we can fit on a truck that'll help us get back to base," Loki elaborated. "If you find any trucks, take what you can from the tanks. We'll need it."

Dugan nodded. "Yes, sirs," he said.

He went back to gather a team, and Loki nodded toward Coulson. "We'll help," he said.

Rogers nodded at the pair of them. "Be quick," he said. "We shouldn't stay too long."

Loki thought that was the smartest thing Rogers had said yet. "Yes, sir," he said before leading Coulson away from the convoy.

There were twelve of them raiding the village, but there wasn't much left to raid. Most of what hadn't been destroyed had been taken already. Somebody, whether the retreating Italians or the invading Germans, had been very thorough. While Dugan and Jones broke into the fuel tank of a Fiat M14/41, Loki and Coulson broke into every building they could. Ramirez had been amongst the liberated, and with Morita, they began tearing apart every bed sheet and old shirt they could find, creating makeshift bandages. Two of the men captured had been medics, and while everything else was underway, they quickly made their way along the line to assess the wounded.

Loki and Coulson found precious little on their hunt, and returned to the line with several loaves of old bread and some hard cheese. They found Rogers standing by the cab of one of the Opels, with the man Loki recognised as Sergeant Barnes in the front seat. Though he seemed in one piece, he looked worse than many of the wounded, staring blankly out the window. Almost unthinkingly, Loki passed him a block of cheese. Barnes only looked at it, seeming to only be half-aware of his surroundings.

"You found him," Loki observed. "Good."

Rogers nodded. "Yeah. Thanks," he said, sounding pleased beneath the exhaustion in his voice.

"Looks like everything's about ready to go," said Loki. "Six Opels, two Wagens. Let's just hope it's enough to get us back to Barrea."

"Go on," said Rogers. "I'll be right behind you this time."

Loki nodded. "Sir," he said.

He returned to the Kübelwagen at the front and reclaimed his seat. They were joined by Pinkerton and Ramirez as well, both crowded into the back seat with Howlett.

"You want to take this one, Luke?" Coulson asked.

"What?" Loki looked over to him, and it was a few moments before he understood the request. "Oh. I don't know how. Never learned."

"Really?" Coulson asked.

Loki shook his head. "Ramirez. You drive?"

"Yes, sir," Ramirez answered.

"Get up here," Loki told him.

Ramirez and Coulson quickly swapped places, stumbling over the back of the bench seat and clumsily moving around one another while trying to dodge everyone else.

"The other bloke was smaller," Pinkerton complained as he tried to move Coulson's knee away from his face.

Loki turned in his seat to watch the struggle. "Howlett, you want to ride up front?" he offered.

"No," said Pinkerton and Coulson at once.

"Sorry, Howlett," said Loki, turning back around with an indifferent shrug.

"Yeah, bite me, tommy," Howlett grumbled, settling in for the long ride back to base.

Before Coulson was even properly settled, Ramirez started the car and pulled back out onto the main road. One by one, the rest followed their tracks south.

* * *

It was nearly dusk before they found their way back to Barrea. Loki was surprised they were able to make it back at all, but even more surprising was Colonel Phillips. He was suspiciously willing to overlook the incident without a thought. Instead, he had everyone involved with the whole incident moved back to Alfedena for recovery and processing. At least a third of the men liberated didn't even belong to America's army, and reconnecting some of them with their units was going to take effort.

By the next afternoon, it seemed as if everyone was about as recovered as they were ever going to get, with a makeshift bar open. Loki kept a pint in his hand for appearance's sake, but he didn't bother drinking it; he saw no point in forcing himself to swallow the goat-piss when he didn't even get any of its intoxicating effects. He wandered through the crowd in the bar, taking his own personal roll call. Randal was back at Barrea. Ramirez was with a small group of Puerto Rican men, no doubt enjoying a break from speaking English. Coulson wandered by the dart board, presumably waiting for Loki to wander over as well. Loki nodded to him before continuing his rounds through the crowd. It took a few minutes, but Loki eventually found Jackson up at the bar. And that was it. The number of Union men in Third platoon was now five, down from forty when they first left New York. Loki tried not to think about that, and instead began to look for a distraction. He quickly found one in the shape of Barnes, edging a bit close into his space.

"You promised me a rematch," Barnes said.

Loki wasn't in the mood. He was sure Barnes wasn't either, but played along all the same. He was only the rescuer; Barnes had been through hell and back. To admit exhaustion when Barnes wasn't prepared to do so would have been insulting to both of them.

"Name the time," Loki said, shrugging lazily.

"How about now?"

Barnes grinned at him wryly and backed off, but only just. Stepping aside, Loki motioned for Barnes to lead the way to the dart board. Barnes approached the board with purpose and pulled the darts from the hard cork, wearing a smile Loki didn't entirely trust.

"Double or nothing?" Barnes offered.

"You have that kind of money on you?" Loki asked.

Barnes nudged Coulson out of the way and took his mark in front of the board. "I've been practising," he said.

Loki and Coulson shrugged indifferently at one another, and Loki passed his beer off to someone else.

"Double or nothing," he agreed tiredly. "Show me what you've got."

Barnes threw the first dart, landing right on the edge of the bull. He had been practising since their last match in Barrea. Then, Loki'd had to put effort into throwing poorly, just to keep the con up.

"Not bad," he said. "Do that again."

Barnes threw the second one, landing on the other side of the bull.

"He did it again," Coulson said.

Barnes grinned smugly at Loki. "Hope you got the money," he said. He threw the third dart, landing it almost in the exact centre of the bullseye.

Loki nodded appreciatively as he fetched the darts. He quickly tested their weight as he walked back to his mark. Biting his lip, he looked from the board to Barnes.

"That's a pretty good score," he said. He ignored Coulson's smirk. "I'm going to have to try hard to beat that."

Still looking at Barnes, he threw the first dart with his left hand. Despite the awkward sideways angle, it hit the bullseye.

Loki cringed. "I'm sorry. My hand slipped. Let me try that again." He threw the second one the same way, hitting the bullseye again.

Barnes gaped, and those few around them began to stare. Except for Coulson, who laughed into his drink.

"You know, I forgot to mention something too," Loki said. "I'm not left-handed."

He moved the third dart to his right hand and took it by the pointed tip, throwing it end-over-end. It hit the bullseye so hard, it knocked the other two out of the board. Loki turned back to Barnes, who still stood gaping like a stunned fish.

"I believe that's one-hundred dollars," Loki said.

Barnes looked to him finally and nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, of course."

He pulled out his wallet and emptied its contents, handing the cash over to Loki before walking back to inspect the board.

"There. You feel better now?" Coulson asked.

"No," Loki admitted. He tucked the money away along with everything else he'd swindled the same way.

"No-one's gonna be stupid enough to play with you after that," Coulson pointed out.

Loki shrugged indifferently. "It was getting boring anyway," he reasoned.

Coulson studied him for a long moment. "You all right, man?"

"Yeah," Loki said. He sighed and looked back over the crowd. "I feel as though I should be asking you that question," he said.

"I've been better," Coulson said honestly. "But this is what we signed up to get fifty bucks a month for, isn't it?"

"They're not paying us enough," Loki declared.

"We should sign up for airborne," said Coulson. "I hear they get a hundred."

Loki turned an unamused glare to him for just a moment before returning his attention to the crowd. Rogers had wandered in at one point and was wandering around, apparently looking for someone.

"You know, there are only five Union men left in the platoon," Loki said apropos of nothing. "Assuming Randal's still in one piece back in Barrea."

"Fuck," muttered Coulson. "Really?"

Loki nodded. Coulson looked at him silently for a few long moments before putting down his drink and tugging Loki toward the door.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get out of here."

Loki nodded again and began to follow after Coulson. Before they made it to the door, Morita caught them up and stopped them.

"Hey, Captain Rogers wants to talk to you two," he said.

"About what?" Coulson asked.

Morita shrugged. "He didn't say. Just asked me to grab you two."

Coulson and Loki shrugged tiredly at one another and followed Morita back through the bar to the table Rogers sat at, along with a small group. Barnes was there with him, as well as Howlett and Dugan. Morita sat down next to Jones and Pinkerton, leaving two seats open. Uncertain, Loki and Coulson both sat down, waiting for someone else to speak first.

"I'm putting together a team," Rogers said without preamble.

"I'm sorry, what?" Dugan asked.

Loki looked around the table once more, suddenly very interested in the group Rogers had chosen. Loki himself had no business there. Coulson had only turned seventeen in December, having lied about his age to enlist. Howlett was Canadian and Pinkerton English. Morita, a Japanese-American, and Jones, a rather large black man, were both from 3d Battalion, in the only integrated company in the regiment. And Rogers himself was still a mystery. But they were all, with the exceptions of Dugan and Barnes, not where they were supposed to be. And all people Rogers wanted to join him on whatever mission he'd appointed himself.

"We all saw some of what Hydra's doing," Rogers said. "Someone needs to go after these guys."

Loki shook his head. "No," he said. "You don't know what you're getting into."

All eyes were on him now, but he didn't even flinch.

"We were all there, which is why I presume we're all here now," Loki continued. "We all saw the same thing."

Rogers looked around the table incredulously. "That's why something has to be done," he said.

"What the hell do you think we've been doing?" asked Coulson flatly.

Before he could say any more, Loki reached out to silence him. A week ago, Coulson had seen Captain Rogers under an entirely different light. He probably still did, but he was exhausted and not thinking clearly, and Loki knew it.

"Hydra is Patton's project," Loki said evenly. "Ray's right; there are entire armies going after Hydra. Not just us now, but everyone. But do you know what happens when you try to slay a hydra?"

The table was quiet for a few seconds, until Jones came forward with, "Its head grows back. Cut off one head; two more take its place."

"You have to cut out its heart," Loki explained. "Its heart doesn't grow back. You take away its power and it can no longer recover from its wounds."

"Hydra's weapons," Barnes said. "They got technology I've never seen before. Not even at Stark Expo."

"And they must have something powering it," Loki pointed out.

"Schmidt's an occult adviser to Hitler," said Dugan. "That's what I heard anyway. Makes sense, with some of what they had back there."

Rogers looked around the table again and nodded. "All right," he said. "We go after their power, and stop them from getting any more. If we do that, we're gonna need an expert on the occult."

Everyone at the table looked around anxiously then, none sure where to go from there.

"I know an expert," Loki said suddenly.

* * *

I've decided to venture into serial publication, with a novel called Mistletoe, which you can read for free here: [link on my profile] (you need an account to rate it, which I would appreciate, but that's up to you. Accounts are free, at least). It takes place in an alternate version of this series' universe, but is a step closer to the mythological roots and completely removed from any Marvel canons. It features one of the dwarfs from 'Sky-Treader,' as well as the trickster god himself, and works to further fiddle with the world and various interpretations of the old myths and sagas. This series will not be deleted or removed from the internet, and I do plan to continue with it as I have time. 


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